> There is nothing wrong with getting the size of the market wrong by that much
Remember that the Apple Watch did this. The initial release was priced way outside of market conditions--it was being sold as a luxury-branded fashion accessory at a >$1k price point on release. It was subtly rebranded as a mass-affordable sports fitness tracker the next year.
The luxury watch was released in April 2015. The cheaper stainless steel model wasn't released until the fall event a few months later.
But I was talking about branding and marketing; sorry if that wasn't clear. At release the Hermes and "Edition" models were the story. The Apple Watch was the next fashion accessory. You couldn't even buy it at an Apple Store -- you could get fitted, but had to order it shipped to store. But the Hermes store next door had the expensive models in stock.
It wasn't until 2016 that Apple partnered with Nike and changed their branding for the watch to be about health and fitness.
Yes, I agree that health and fitness are a much bigger part of the branding now than they were initially (but the basic features were there right from the beginning — I remember sitting in town halls, with "pings" ringing out at 10 to the hour, and everybody standing up for a minute).
That comports with my memory. I have no idea what Apple's internal sales projections were. But there was a ton of nerd and tech press criticism to the effect that young people didn't wear watches any longer so obviously this was a stupid idea for a product.
Even if I'm not really sold for day-to-day wear because of the limited battery life, I do have one.
Sure. My point was that entry level APPLE watches never changed much in their price point.
I believe you are mistaken, in several aspects:
1) Entry level watch models were available for about $400 right away, which is still more or less the starting point (though due to inflation, that's a bit cheaper now, of course).
2) Luxury models (>$1K price) are still available, now under the Hermès co-branding.
The one thing that was only available in the initial release were the "Edition" models at a >$10K price point, but there was speculation that this was more of an anchoring message (to place the watch as a premium product) and never a segment meant to be sustained.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch