Roger Fingas
The reach of the Apple Watch is due to expand both domestically and internationally in the coming weeks, reportedly arriving in Belgium on Sept. 19, and possibly U.S. carriers Sprint and T-Mobile later in the month.
The Belgian launch is official and will coincide with the opening of the country's first Apple Store, local site Apple Weetjes said on Thursday. Sport models will start at €419 ($475) and €469 ($531) in 38- and 42-millimeter sizes, respectively, while stainless steel Watches will begin at €669 ($758) and €719 ($814).
T-Mobile USA will begin selling the Watch on Sept. 25, the same day as the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, according to MacRumors. The carrier's CEO, John Legere, recently confirmed plans for Watch sales, but did not offer a definite date.
Sprint will also begin sales on the 25th, according to stock screens from the carrier. Prices should be roughly identical to Apple's, though allegedly 99 cents higher. Unusually the carrier is expected to sell only third-party accessories by companies like Mophie and CaseMate, leaving out Apple bands.
Apple has been trying to deepen the retail footprint of the Watch since it first launched the product in April. It also recently debuted new band and finish options, and should release watchOS 2 once bugs are fixed.
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1 Comment
You should check your sources… Apparently, the Apple Watch is not available for purchase in Belgium at all; there are display tables and demo units and that's that. I read this in french, on this blog: http://belgium-iphone.lesoir.be/2015/09/15/lapple-watch-commercialisee-en-belgique-des-ce-samedi/
The update was added after a few commenters from Brussels pointed out that they personally went there and were told so by the Apple Store staff, and roughly translates as:
Yeah, sure… days. We all know how the launch went, so keep telling yourself that. Also, if you check the belgian Apple website, you can see that there are no “buy” links to be seen… If the initial launch started on the online store and only progressed to their brick-and-mortar stores a while later, why should the launch in Belgium be any different?
Anyway, I'm guessing that if the Apple Watch was being actually put up for sale in Brussels/Belgium, surely there would be some evidence of that on apple.com/pr, am I right?
I did my own checks because my brother moved to Brussels this Friday and I was hoping he could bring me an Apple Watch come Oct.4 (there will be a general election here in Portugal and, being the responsible citizen he is, he'll come home to vote) but, alas, that doesn't seem very likely now, does it? Thank you AI and MR for deceiving me (not).