After revealing its Apple Watch project last September, the Cupertino giant is officially announcing the product’s inauguration in an event in San Francisco, today, March 9. The famous gadget will be available to clients from April on. Its price isn’t yet disclosed, but it is known that it starts at $349.
Except for timekeeping, the watch will have features like fitness tracking, communication, navigation and banking. Some other characteristics might be announced today, possibly including remote-controlling movies or music on iPhones or Apple TV-sets. Some particularities of the product’s design and engineering haven’t been revealed so far, and the product-announcement event will probably focus on these as well.
Apple hasn’t been working alone on this project – many App developers have been granted access to a kit for making watch apps. The number of available apps is expected to rise to 1,000 at least, including non-Apple apps, which are vital for raising a long-term interest in the watch. John Gruber, the company’s main watch-developer, told the press that Apple has invited more than a hundred designers and developers from other companies at its headquarters over the past month, in order to test watch apps.
For sales to be efficient, the Apple Store needs to redefine itself as a shopping space. Current shops are relatively full all the time and they don’t provide the intimacy which is typical of luxury watch stores. Apple’s design chief, Jonathan Ive, disclosed the fact that the company’s heads of design and retail are planning to redesign many of Apple’s 450 retail stores. There will be other places where Apple Watch will become available, notably luxury shopping cities such as Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, the best known high-class department store in the French capital.
Since future buyers will learn important information at today’s event, like new features, new apps, new concept stores and details about the gadget’s availability in the U.S. and China, the gathering is expected to boost anticipation for the early April market launch. Advertised as Apple’s “most personal device yet”, the Apple Watch aims to strengthen our ties with technology and bring closer a new era of communication.
image: Lafayette Galleries in Paris
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