Prediction of Apple Watch price: Stainless Steel at $749 & 42 mm models cost more

Up until now, we have heard quite a bit of rumors indicating the prices of the different variants of the Apple Watch, though they are all just that: rumors. The only thing that we know for sure is that the base model of the Apple Watch is going to start from $349 and that the Apple Watch Edition will run into thousands of dollars.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball, however, has a very interesting take on the prices of the Apple Watch. Based on speculations from a MacRumor forum member — pgiguere1 – Gruber thinks that it is possible that the 42mm band variants of the Apple Watch will cost more than the 38mm ones. The difference is going to be a nominal $30 for the Apple Watch Sport variants, but might increase to more than $1000 for the Apple Watch Edition that are made from 18 carat gold.

As explained by Gruber, the difference in prices between the different variants of the Apple Watch might be higher than the $100-150 premium consumers are used to paying for the iPhone or iPad, because there are other significant differences between them as well.

But if the starting price for the steel Apple Watch is $500, I don’t see why Apple Watch Sport exists at $350. $150 difference does not justify the difference. If they were that close in price, there’d only be one of them. Sport and steel only make sense as separate collections if the steel collection is significantly higher in price, even at the entry level with the rubber Sport band. People are looking at this as a $100-200 upsell, like going from 16 to 64 to 128 GB iPhones and iPads. Technically that’s possible, but it doesn’t make any sense to me strategically or in terms of operational efficiency. With storage tiers in iOS devices, the only difference is the capacity of the flash memory chip. That’s it. All the other components, and the machining and tooling required to produce them, are the same. With Sport and steel Apple Watches, everything you can see or touch is different. Different metal (aluminum vs. steel), different finishes (matte vs. highly-polished), different displays (glass vs. sapphire), different case backs (plastic vs. ceramic and sapphire). If the marketing argument doesn’t persuade you, the operations angle should. I just don’t see why Apple would bother with all this if the starting price for steel Apple Watch wasn’t at least around double that of Sport.

The final pricing guess from Gruber for the various Apple Watch variants are as follows for 38/42mm bands:

• Apple Watch Sport (all colors): $349/399

• Apple Watch, steel, Sport Band: $749/799

• Apple Watch, steel, Classic Buckle: $849/899

• Apple Watch, steel, Milanese Loop: $949/999

• Apple Watch, steel, Modern Buckle (38mm only): $1199

• Apple Watch, steel, Leather Loop (42mm only): $1299

• Apple Watch, steel, Link Bracelet: $1499/1599

• Apple Watch, space black steel, Link Bracelet: $1899/1999

• Apple Watch Edition, Sport Band: $7499/7999

• Apple Watch Edition, Modern Buckle (38mm only): $9999

• Apple Watch Edition, Classic Buckle (42mm only): $10,999

  Gruber also goes on to speculate that Apple will also announce two insanely expensive variants of the Apple Watch that will cost up to $19,999.
• via Daring Fireball