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This April Apple will be venturing into the latest wearable
gadget market, the smartwatch, and the company’s high-end luxury model, referred to simply as the Apple Watch Edition, will come encased in 18-karat gold. If demand for such a watch meets expectations it will require 30% of the world’s annual gold production which ought to really help gold prices move higher.
The following article by Frank Holmes (usfunds.com) has been edited and abbreviated to ensure a fast and easy read. The original version of the article* was posted on said site under the title Could Apple Buy a Third of the World’s Gold?.
Is there anything Apple can’t do?
- First it revolutionized the personal computing business.
- Then, with the launch of the iPod in 2001, it forced the music industry to change its tune.
- Against initial market reservations, the company succeeded at making Star Trek-like tablets hip when it released the iPad in 2010.
- In Q1 2015, a record 75 million units of its now-ubiquitous iPhone were sold around the globe.
- The smartphone’s operating system, iOS, currently controls a jaw-dropping 89-percent share of all systems worldwide, pushing the second-place OS, Google’s Android, down to 11 percent from 30 percent just a year ago.
What’s Apple’s next trick? How about moving the world’s gold market?
This April Apple will be venturing into the latest wearable gadget market, the smartwatch.
- The company’s high-end luxury model, referred to simply as the Apple Watch Edition, will come encased in 18-karat gold.
- The company expects to produce 1 million units of this particular model per month in the second quarter of 2015 alone, according to the Wall Street Journal.
- Assuming each Apple Watch Edition will contain 2 troy ounces of gold that would amount to 24 million troy ounces of gold being used per year, or roughly 746 metric tons (or tonnes).
- If the estimates of how much gold each watch contains are close to reality, and if Apple is able to sell as many units as it claims, then that’s a lot of gold – in fact, that’s 30% of the world’s annual gold production.
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Can Expectations Be Met?
Here’s where this whole discussion could unravel, however. Although we don’t yet know what the Apple Watch Edition will retail at, it’s safe to predict that it will fall somewhere between $4,000 and $10,000…With that in mind, Apple’s sales expectations may possibly be too optimistic but, remember, this is Apple we’re talking about here.
Over the years, it has sufficiently proven itself as a company that more-than-delivers on the “if you build it, they will come” philosophy. Steve Jobs aggressively cultivated a business environment that not only encourages, but insists, on “thinking different”—to use the company’s old slogan—risk-taking and developing must-have gadgets.
Apple hasn’t released a dud product in at least two decades… so, come April, we’ll see for sure what the demand really is—for the Apple Watch as well as gold.
[The above article is presented by Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.munKNEE.com and has been edited ([ ]), abridged (…) and/or reformatted (some sub-titles and bold/italics emphases) for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read. The author’s views and conclusions are unaltered and no personal comments have been included to maintain the integrity of the original article. This paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.]
*Original Article Source: http://www.usfunds.com/investor-library/investor-alert/#.VPKESeGK5ME
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