Mikey Campbell
Following news that Apple will in January shut down an Apple Watch pop-up shop in Paris, an identical store-within-a-store concept located in London's Selfridges department store has closed its doors.
As noted by MacRumors, the Selfridges Apple Watch store is no longer listed on Apple's retail list for the UK, suggesting the outlet has been shuttered.
AppleInsider confirmed the closure on Tuesday. Phone calls placed directly to the Apple Watch gallery are forwarded to a recorded message saying the location is no longer operating. Customers interested in Apple Watch are urged to visit Apple's website to find their nearest brick-and-mortar Apple store.
The Selfridges Apple Watch gallery closes its doors after serving London for some 20 months. Dubbed a pop-up shop for its small size, location within a larger department store and focus on a single product, the outlet officially opened in April 2015 shortly before Apple Watch went on sale worldwide.
To drum up interest in the smartwatch gallery, Apple commissioned a series of promotional installations for display in the department store's windows. The most recent incorporated Apple Watch into hand-sculpted flowers of all sizes, some of which were created using 3D printing.
As reported in October, Apple is scheduled to close a similar Apple Watch pop-up shop in the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris later this month. With the Parisian smartwatch boutique seeing a steady decline in business, Apple is slowly winding down operations and has over the past weeks transitioned employees to regional company stores.
Once the Galeries Lafayette location closes, Apple will be left with only one dedicated Apple Watch venue in the Isetan department store in Tokyo, Japan. The future of that outlet is unclear.
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27 Comments
Presumably this is due to few watches being sold at these locations. I've seen I think two other Apple watches in the wild. My Series 1 watch is good - I miss it if I forget it - but it certainly isn't essential. It has numerous problems: It's generally a bit slow, and the heart monitor is pretty poor. It's slow to detect a pulse and often just wrong, I've had heart rates as low as 35 registered.
Siri is slow too. Frequently displaying "I'll tap you when I'm ready", then either never tapping or ending up cancelling the request altogether because I lower my arm, which is downright annoying. It looks ridiculous as I have to walk around holding my arm up until Siri finally processes. This brings me to another point with Siri: why the hell aren't more requests processed directly on the phone/watch?! I had ViaVoice doing recognition on a 200mhz PPC603, I'm sure a 700mhz ARM CPU can handle it.
Third party apps are still slow and often unresponsive too, even though the UI responds to touches.
FitBits auto-detect activities, why do I have to manually start them with the Apple Watch?
It is great for notifications and replying with short responses, and for changing music tracks. The complications are really useful too, as is the Apple Pay capability. But when people ask me what I like about it, or to show me what it can do, sadly I quickly run out of things to say or show.
I remember being in an Apple Store when v1 of the watch was released. A lady was there by appointment to try out the watch and put her handbag on the glass case holding the watches. You would of though that she had just s$$it on their display by the reaction of the staff who demanded that she immediately remove it or she would have to leave. Nobody knows if you have the 10k (or whatever the price is) gold watch or the cheapest version. Every watch looks the same and sadly (as I really want to see Cook's first product succeed) it just looks like some sort of tech-y watch that everyone has. Now if it had functionality that a Rolex didn't (like actually using my health data for some real purpose not some app that has no purpose being in a watch other than to say they have a watch app) it may be worth it but a high end watch like a Rolex it isn't (a high end Rolex appreciates over time, the apple watch does not). If everyone drove a Ferrari, a Ford Focus would suddenly stand out.
I think another factor is the proximity of Apple's very first store in the U.K. at Regent Street.
It is just one underground stop away from Selfridges, five to ten minutes bus ride or even twenty to thirty minutes walk.
I've seen more than a few Apple Watches in the real world recently. More than I expected to see.