New smartwatches weren’t the only thing Apple revealed at its press conference this morning. The Cupertino company also announced a price cut for the Apple Watch Series 3, which previously started at $279. The Series 3 now starts at $199, and the Series 4 has been discontinued.
Here’s how the pricing breaks down:
- The Series 3 (GPS) with built-in GPS, optical heart rate sensor, and water resistance is $199
- The Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) is $299
Apple Watch prices have been on a bit of a roller-coaster lately, what with Apple’s decision to kill the infamously luxe Apple Watch Edition. In September 2018, the company quietly increased the price on its new Apple Watch lineup by $70 compared with the previous generation models.
The Apple Watch Series 3, you might recall, was released in September 2017. It featured a faster processor, a dual-core S3 system-on-chip, Bluetooth 4.2 (compared with Bluetooth 4.0 on older models), a built-in altimeter for measuring flights of stairs climbed, and increased memory. It was the first Apple Watch available in a variant with LTE cellular connectivity, and the first on which Siri could speak thanks to its increased processing power.
June 5th: The AI Audit in NYC
Join us next week in NYC to engage with top executive leaders, delving into strategies for auditing AI models to ensure fairness, optimal performance, and ethical compliance across diverse organizations. Secure your attendance for this exclusive invite-only event.
The Apple Watch Series 4 was announced a year later like clockwork (no pun intended), and it featured larger displays with thinner bezels, rounded corners, and a redesigned ceramic back. An Apple-designed W3 wireless chip and improved haptic feedback were in tow, as was a new S4 64-bit dual-core processor capable of up to double the S3’s performance. But the arguable headliner (in addition to fall detection) was an FDA-cleared electrical heart sensor that worked by measuring the potential difference between the wearer’s wrist and a finger from their opposing hand.
According to analysts at Canalys, Apple shipped more than 12 million Apple Watches in 2015, constituting two-thirds of all smartwatch sales that year. That number seems quaint today — analysts at IDC project smartwatch shipments hit 124.9 million by the end of 2018, up 8.2% from the prior year. And MarketWatch pegs the market at $35.7 billion by 2024.
