At the Isetan Department Store in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Apple is building a store specifically for the Apple Watch on the ground floor. Macotakara thinks it might be a permanent fixture because it is listed in the mall directory below.
Japan is one of the 9 countries where the Apple Watch will launch on April 24th. Earlier this week we saw the size of the Apple Watch Store at Galleries Lafayette in Paris and at London Selfridges. Apple also began advertising for its Apple Watch in its traditional stores this week.
This will take some getting used to. Imagine a world where there is an Apple Store on one side of the mall and an Apple Watch store on the other like so many Starbucks.
There is also a new ad on the company’s website without a link.
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On the same floor as ladies’ accessories, interesting. Gonna have to go check this out.
Much of the criticism of the Apple Watch makes me think it is from complete misunderstanding of the Asian market, for those westerners bleating about gold, cost, tacky features matching heartbeats and more, fail to understand that in Asia, those things go down extremely well.
Shinjuku is, as the epicenter of Tokyo shopping an awesome place to put that foot forward. Given the status in Japan of Apple being a high value product, I am sure the watch will do very well. Isetan is likely a better match than Takashimaya.
Asians are not afraid to pay for quality, huge sections of N America look for lowest price, not highest value. This difference is what Apple seems to be addressing with its 3 ranges.
That’s pretty much spot on, Dave. Thanks for making those points. People living in the U.S. (North America) with a U.S.-centric mind set, as you point out, have only local market perception rather then global. Although I am usually one to be wait out 1st generation products (any product, including the new Macbook) I have this gut feeling Apple is going to be phenomenally successful in this Apple Watch category. We’ll see soon enough how the market reacts to the product.
Whoever came up with the idea of slipping a watch app into the 8.2 iOS update should be fired. When will Cook learn that this post-Jobs approach harkens back to Detroit putting increasing amounts of chrome on its cars. And it’s not as though I can even delete the app!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Grow up. Move the app into a folder if you don’t have any desire to buy the watch. I’m glad it’s there. Tight integration is the hallmark of the Apple experience, and why this will suceed far more than my Pebble.
Think of it this way:
The code for the Apple watch would logically, have to be added to iOS. It ties in at a very low level.
Choices:
A: place a single Apple watch app on the home screen which contains watch settings, watch AppStore, pairing functionality and fitness achievements.
B: Put a watch area in settings. Put a watch apps tab in the AppStore. Put a watch pairing option under Bluetooth in settings. Put fitness achievements split between Health and Game Center.
I prefer option A. Doesn’t annoy everyone who doesn’t have a watch, just put it in a folder and the rest of iOS is unchanged.