A few days ago there were rumours that Huawei’s stylish Android Wear watch could cost as much as $1000, hopefully these new details of a lower price are closer to the mark.
At MWC we had some hands on time with the Huawei Watch and although it is a good looker, and smooth operating wearable, the fact that even Huawei reps themselves claimed the price would be high had us worry. A few days later their were rumours of a $1000 price tag which would be really quite unacceptable, but they seem to have been off the mark now new information has arisen.
Gizchina News of the week
According to online resellers in Europe, the Huawei Watch will be available from between 350-400 Euros, much more affordable than $1000, but still way above the price of similar Android Wear devices from Motorola, LG and Asus.
The prices are still unconfirmed from Huawei’s end, so there is still a chance that these prices are merely place holders, as even at this lower retail price it will be hard for Huawei to find willing customers.
[ GizChina.es ]
Anything above 99$ is too much so it makes little difference if it’s 350 or 1000.
Even 99$ is a lot in a world with global smartphone ASP at about 300$ and declining.
Current products are rather misguided anyway so it’s difficult to convince buyers with something like this if it’s not affordable.
to be fair this is quite premium , stainless steel & aluminum.
a smartwatch is different from smartphones. it’s not a necessity but a luxury. so it’s not mass market.
Like forks and soda cans right?
Those are not expensive materials and this is less of a luxury than a normal 100$ watch.
And it is a mass market category, that is the entire point ,we wouldn’t be paying attention if it wasn’t.The only problem is that Huawei and the bunch are morons allowing greed to dictate their actions instead of taking advantage of an opportunity.
Pricing this at 99$ would save them long term a billion in marketing and advertising and would add a few billions in revenue (from watches and other products) over the next few years. But no, why be the first sane watch maker when you can just just sleep in the trenches like all the others and let Xiaomi or someone else take the lead.
Less luxury than a 100$ watch?! I don’t know where you live but in my country you don’t get anything else than a cheap plastic watch for 100$. I do agree that 350$ is a bit too much but believing that you could get a high quality, high performance, high end smart watch for less than 99$is just ridiculous. Sure you can buy a cheap one from an unknown brand in China for less than that but then you have no android wear, low performance and shitty quality.
I think that 350$ is a fair price for this product.
You can easily find Invicta , Fossil or even some Citizen models at 100$ in the US.
And i am sorry but your understanding of costs in ridiculous. Those things are very simple and cheap and only getting cheaper. Right now most are using smartphone parts in watches and that drives the cost a bit higher.
They got a tiny screen,bellow 10 square cm, the small Apple watch screen is some 7 square cm with pixel density similar to a 5 inch 720p screen – the area of such a screen is some 69 square cm so almost 10 times bigger than the screen in the small Apple watch.
Some quad core A53 tablet SoCs are as cheap as 5$, a watch SoC should be 1-2$ ( and even less for some). Little RAM , little NAND no 3G/4G , maybe no wifi (a wifi chip in a high end phone is less than 5$ anyway). The sensors are not much either, at least not the ones being used now.
There is a reason low end (and very poor ) watches from China are 30-50$, they don’t cost much to make.
IHS estimated the cost of Moto 360 (materials and manufacturing) at 65.77$ and for the LG G Watch 52.40$. You can bet that the cheapest Apple Watch is less than 50$ since it’s not even stainless steel and sapphire.
Oh and those 49-99$ fitness bracelets are way cheap too, Xiaomi can afford to sell it’s band at 12.62$ ,that’s how cheap, and that 200$ HTC bracelet surely costs less than 30$.
It”s dumbphone hardware plus a few sensors that is being sold at smartphone prices while offering little to the user.
And since you think that 350$ is ok, here 10 things you can buy instead of a 349$ watch
A high end phone from China and some change
An ipad mini gen 2 and again some change
Up to 4×22 inch IPS monitors
A 39 inch 4k Seiki TV and have 10$ left.
A decent laptop.
10 or more Chromecast.
12 TB of HDDs
Over a tonne of steel
11 Firefox OS smartphones
An Xbox One