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This is how much you’ll have to work to afford an Apple Watch

The countdown to order day is on and the question on plenty of minds is: How am I going to pay for one of these?

 

Molly McHugh

Tech

Posted on Mar 27, 2015   Updated on May 29, 2021, 5:22 am CDT

The best things in life don’t come free, and neither does the Apple Watch. Apple‘s smartwatch is a play into the luxury market, with select units costing as much as $17,000

But when has a remarkably high price tag on a product that until recently was more concept than reality stopped us from buying it? Plenty of Apple enthusiasts and gadget hounds will stop at nothing to own the first-generation Apple Watch. 

Such unadulterated devotion requires perspective, though. The countdown to order day is on and the question on plenty of minds is: How am I going to pay for one of these?

Data viz platform Silk, which has created other compelling Apple Watch visualization projects, has a new one for us. The latest interactive charts show off a variety of ways to price check the Apple Watch‘s real worth, i.e., how many days you’ll have to work, retail price compared to regional GDP, and its cost compared to income. 

Here’s how many days you would need to work in order to afford the cheapest version of the Apple Watch. 

Here’s local retail price as a percentage of per capita GDP. 

And Apple Watch price compared to average annual income.

These charts should pop up as a prerequisite to visiting Apple.com on April 10

Screengrab via Apple

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*First Published: Mar 27, 2015, 10:30 am CDT