The Apple Watch has a “behavioral value” of $351 a year, according to a note from firm Global Equities Research.
That’s basically the price of a 38mm Sport, so tell that to the people who ask you what your new wearable is good for.
The research note, which comes from GER managing director Trip Chowdhry and analyst Tej Singh, who sampled between 200 and 250 Apple Watch owners, InformationWeek reports. Participants reported that their Apple Watch cut down on the number of times they had to remove their iPhones from their pockets by half, from 110 times a day to 55.
Chowdhry and Singh assumed a time of about six seconds for each removal, which translates to a daily savings of five and a half minutes — or 33.46 hours annually. If you were paid $10.50 an hour for that time, your “savings” per year would be about $351.31.
That’s what the report says, anyway. It’s a fun exercise, but unfortunately, time does not equal money. Even if the Apple Watch “pays” for itself, it doesn’t take into account the cost of the iPhone you need to run it and the service plan you need to run the iPhone. Nor does it account for the time you spend looking at and messing with your Watch, which GER’s research note calls “the most addictive device ever created for both consumer as well as for the enterprise.”
Time does, however, equal time, and almost a day and a half of increased efficiency per year is pretty impressive. Even if it does sound a little bit like that old Saturday Night Live sketch about shortening words.
Evan Killham is a freelance writer who lives in Nebraska and isn’t interested in football, so he has plenty of time to play and think about video games. He has written for Bitmob and GamesBeat and sometimes, he even goes outside. But not too often because he’s heard there are bees out there. Occasionally, companies send free units for review. Evan subscribes to Cult of Mac’s Reviews Policy and also does not keep the items he receives for possible coverage.
One response to “Study: If time is money, Apple Watch pays for itself”
Everyone already has to own a smartphone and pay a cell bill anyway, so those costs don’t factor into the savings calculation. MAYBE if someone only owned a $40 burner phone with prepaid minutes and then said “Oh man I need to go buy an iPhone 6 and get a monthly data plan so that I can buy an Apple Watch and save time!” then you’d have a point. But most people who buy the watch will already have an iPhone and cell plan regardless.
The real critique of this “study” is that it only applies to the self-employed or those who do freelance projects outside of a normal job, since they’re time actually is money.