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Time’s up for the solid gold Apple Watch.
Apple’s
AAPL,
2015 luxury smartwatch, which carried an eye-watering $10,000 to $17,000 price tag, is now listed among the company’s obsolete-products list.
The gold watch was part of the first generation of Apple Watch Edition products, commonly referred to as Series 0, which will no longer be supported by the company, as MacRumors first reported on Tuesday. The 18-karat gold watch from 2015 is now on Apple’s publicly available obsolete-products list, which considers products obsolete if they are more than seven years old. That means the tech giant won’t provide parts or replacement services. Nor will it fix any of the watch’s hardware issues. The company will also end software support and updates.
That could be a big deal for those who shelled out big bucks for the luxury model back in the day.
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in fact, for those who dropped up to $17,000 on Apple’s gold watch, investing the money in Apple stocks may have been better in the long run.
Shares of Apple Inc. opened 2015 at $27.85 per share, and if a person purchased $17,000 of the company’s stock instead of the gold watch at that time, then that investment would be worth about $87,000 as of Tuesday, representing a 516% increase.
So what if you are one of the elite, like Beyonce, who does own this gold Apple Watch Edition, or another original Apple Watch? Users of all Series 0 Watches can still use them, but they won’t be updated past 2018’s watchOS 4.3.2, and they won’t be serviced by Apple. It could be possible to get them serviced by third-party repair shops.
Representatives from Apple were not immediately available for comment, so it’s not clear how many of these luxury gold smartwatches Apple sold. Apple stopped selling the watch about 16 months after releasing them, and a 2019 report from Bloomberg stated Apple’s sales for the gilded timepiece were in the low tens of thousands.
When the gold Apple Watch came out in 2015, it was famously spotted on the wrists of some high-profile celebrities, including Beyoncé, Katy Perry and late fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.
In the meantime, Apple just released its Series 9 Watch at its September product event, calling it the company’s “most powerful yet.” The Series 9 Apple Watch comes in at a much lower starting price tag compared to the 2017 luxury watch, running $399, while the premium Ultra 2 Watch has a starting cost of $799.
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