Ceramic Case Could Return With Apple Watch Series 12

I absolutely loved my ceramic Apple Watch with the black Milanese loop. That made the ceramic pop and the contrast was amazing. Looks like I wasn't the only one who appreciated that look.

Oh finally!!

I think there's a bigger picture here that the rumored return of the Apple Watch Edition fits into very neatly.

I think we are seeing the rapid escalation of Apple's luxury strategy: a strategy uniquely positioned to counter the RAMpocalypse in a way that ends up benefitting ALL Apple customers, even (especially?) low end buyers. A strategy that no other hardware manufacturer can copy.

It has already been true for two decades that there is a class of buyer that is price-insensitive: they are going to buy "the best" iPhone or 'the best" Apple Watch or even "the best" AirPods, and it doesn't matter how much they cost. These buyers have been artificially capped at the traditional high end of Apples product matrix. The iPhone Pro Max is $1,300, the Apple Watch Ultra is $800, and AirPods Pro are only $250. Apple is leaving money on the table with every one of these buyers. And there are a LOT more of them, world wide, than tech enthusiasts would imagine. These people live in a different world.

Now I'm not talking about the lunacy of the original gold Apple Watch for $25K, I'm talking about the new iPhone Ultra that is going to start at $2,000 and top out at $3,500. Maybe the Apple Watch Ultra goes up to $1000. And the Ceramic Edition returns at $2000, $4000 with an Hermes band. And AirPods Pro with infrared cameras, AI, and advanced health tracking are $500.

Apple leans into the K-shaped economy and starts pulling maximum revenues and profit margin from this class of buyer, that actually up until now has been under-monetized. Apple herds more of their profit margin into these low volume, very high price products, and uses the extra revenue to keep prices on the lower models at what will then be best-in-class: the Neo stays at $700, the base Apple Watch stays at $250, base iPad stays at $450, base AirPods at $130.

Microsoft and Google and Dell and Samsung have no ability to copy this strategy, and their products will keep having price increases every 90 days, until they are more expensive than Apple's entry-level stuff.

TL;DR: Apple is creating and emphasizing ultra-premium tiers of their consumer product lines to capture unrealized profit margin, that in turn will subsidize the low cost of their entry-level products that competitors will have no answer to as the component crisis extends and deepens.

this is actually great news

Why would they re-introduce ceramic on a 2 year old case design? Not happening this year, next year, we shall see

even though never owned one, I didnt like the option going away. they look neat.

would be cool if we also saw the return of apple leather cases, and a new MagSafe battery for iPhones beyond the Air.