Apple to Sell Limited Edition Chinese New Year Apple Watch

Apple has announced that it will be selling a special version of the Apple Watch in celebration of Chinese New Year, with sales for the device having already started, and set to run until February 22. The special versions of the watch will be available in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

The Chinese New Year will mark the beginning of the year of the Monkey. Apple will be offering a number of new models for the event, including Apple Watch Sport versions in yellow gold aluminum, and silver aluminum, with these watches to be paired with red straps, with the color red meant to signify good luck.

The watches are priced similar to the standard Apple Watch Sport, with prices staring at S$518, or around $363 for the 38mm version of the watch, and S$598, or $419, for the 42mm version.

The Apple Watch quickly became the best selling smartwatch on the market, with many expecting a second version of the device to be released at some point this year. Apple has been making a big push to sell its products in China for the past year or so, a market that has been a massive market for the company. Many argue that China is Apple’s most important market, with the company having reported massive increases in iPhone sales last year, a trend that is only set to continue with other products.

Apple is likely looking to increase sales of the Apple Watch in Asia, despite having reportedly sold a million Apple Watches in China alone since the launch of the Apple Watch. In fact, IDC even estimates the selling of 3.6 million units in China.

Of course, it could certainly be argued that the Apple Watch is only selling as well as it is because of the fact that the wearable market is so young, and especially when the device was first released there weren’t that many devices that could properly compete with the Apple Watch. Since then, however, a number of great smart watches have been released, and that’s only set to continue as time goes on. While the Apple Watch certainly may remain one of the best devices on the market, Apple is going to have to seriously innovate in the coming years.

According to TalkingData, an analytics firm in China, 41.4 percent of the Apple Watch users in China are based in the major cities, however sales in other areas are growing extremely quickly. Basically sales have started strong in cities, and word of the device is now spreading around the country.

TalkingData also had some insight into iOS use in China, reporting that 27.27 percent of smartphone users in China were using iPhones, while 16.82 percent were using Samsung devices, 11.12 percent using Xiaomi devices, and 8.53 percent using Huawei phones. The rest of the market in China is reportedly sold by mostly local companies.

Based on these figures, it seems as though Apple has had an extremely good start in China, and while the company certainly does have major competition with Samsung, it is well ahead of that competition for now.

Smartwatches are different from smartphones, and as a relatively new market, it will be interesting to see how smartwatches fare in a country like China. Despite this, the Apple Watch currently is only compatible with the iPhone, so while that large number of iPhone users will be able to use the Apple Watch, the rest will not. On the other side, however, Android Wear and Samsung’s Tizen work with both iOS devices and Android devices, meaning that they could potentially be sold to a much wider range of people than the Apple Watch. This, however, is not likely to be a big obstacle for Apple, especially as it turns towards smartwatches that work as standalone devices.

So what’s next for Apple? Apple is likely to continue spreading into fact-developing countries, like India, which is currently in the middle of becoming a major world tech hub, and is thought to be the next big market for major tech companies.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if Apple releases more “special edition” models of the Apple Watch, especially ones that are priced in the lower region compared to its other models.

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