Apple Program Lets Android Owners Trade Up
Apple is reportedly planning a first-of-its-kind trade-in deal offering gift cards to Android users swapping for a new iPhone. The deal will “begin in the coming weeks,” according to 9to5mac.
You know what else begins in the coming weeks? Sales of the Apple Watch, which goes into preview mode April 10 with actual shopping starting April 24.
That’s not a coincidence.
It sure isn’t.
But considering the “big” news about TAG Heuer’s partnership with Google, it is amusing. Gamesmanship! The Swiss better get used to it.
There is a larger point here, too, and that’s about Apple Watch as indicator of Cupertino’s plans going forward. Apple is all in on Apple Watch, but only because it’s even more all in on iPhone. I remain unconvinced that the tether will ever be severed, and I believe the appropriate metaphor for the new device is in positioning the thing as one might the advent of the television remote control. Historically, the primary inputs on TVs were built into the units themselves. When wireless remotes arrived, they slowly but surely usurped that role. TVs didn’t lose their physical controls, of course — they were merely called upon much less frequently.
That’s not a perfect metaphor, but it’s as near as damn it as I’m likely to get right now, and that’s good enough.
The future of iPhone is Apple Watch because the future of Apple is iPhone. One product is not intended to replace the other, but to bolster it. And Apple is not interested in selling you one device when it can sell you two.
Or five.