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Let’s bring in some experts. They’ll tell us we’re comparing apples to oranges here when looking at the Neo and Ultra. “They serve very different purposes, very different audiences,” says Jitesh Ubrani, research director at IDC. “You’re basically talking about a health device versus a general-purpose computer, right? And so the prices shouldn’t be comparable, because they do completely different things.”
I told you. The thing is, I don’t think the average consumer cares about that. However, they care about money. They now see a puzzling discrepancy in prices between Apple’s products.
Terry White, Adobe’s chief global design and photography evangelist, certainly does. I have to publish That Neo now proves Apple iPad accessories Hugely overrated. “To get the same 256GB of storage on a device Basic iPad“, you’re at $449 (and a slower chip).” $249 Magic Keyboard To fit the Mac’s form factor, you pay $698. We used to ask if iPad can replace your laptop. Now the real question is: Why does it cost an extra $100 to replace a laptop with an iPad?
Ubrani admits that if you look at the Apple Watch SE versus the base Apple Watch versus the Ultra, “the SE arguably gives you a 95 percent experience of the base, which then gives you a 95 percent experience of the Ultra. But the price gap between those models is huge. Huge.” He agrees that the Ultra is aimed at a group of users who will pay significantly more for diving capabilities and rugged design. “You charge a premium for those things simply because you can and because people will pay for them,” he says.
How much pays this huge premium? IDC just released its Apple Watch sales estimates. In 2025, Apple is supposed to ship 41.1 million Apple Watches. “Ultra represented approximately 3.5 million (of those) during the year,” Obrani says, adding that Ultra sales were down year over year “due to a lack of a meaningful update.” However, Apple convinced more than 8% of smartwatch buyers to hand over hundreds of dollars more for the premium model.
Balbir Singh, global smartwatch analyst at Counterpoint Research, feels that Apple can almost set the price of its products, especially if these products are expensive and already present in the ecosystem. “They know the mindset of the consumer that they will eventually buy,” he says. “They know they have niche adventure and sports users who need something from Apple itself, for the Apple loyalist, the iPhone user.”
In numbers
Apple may be being greedy here, raising the price of the Watch by hundreds of dollars, but it’s certainly not stupid. He knows Garmin’s flagship dive watch Hovering around $800, he wants to attract those potential customers. We wouldn’t want people to experience an alternative ecosystem, now, would we?