Apple buying a third of world’s gold to meet demand for iWatch

"A third of the world's gold production", not "a third of the world's gold".

Cost: 62 grams @ $38,735 per kg of gold is $2,401

Volume: At 2,767 ton mined 2013 this equated to 44.6 million watches sold in a year to take a third of production. This vs. around 170 million iPhones sold in 2014. Guessing twice as many have iphones this is about a 15% take-up + a growing market.

Volume wise, Apple could easily sell this many watches if it's really good. But a gold version that's going to cost $2,401 in gold alone, plus if Apple did buy this much gold the price is sure to increase. So we would have to be talking a $3,000+ watch that needs replacing every 2 years...hmm I'm skeptical about this.

Rolex gold watches contain 2-3 oz of gold (depends on the model and year). Rolex sells 0.5-1 million watches per year, I don't know what proportion of that are gold watches.

So if Apple Watches are a golden success, they will have to buy a lot of gold indeed, but not one third of mined output. Annual production is about 80m troy ounces, 50% of which is used in jewelry. [1]

[1] http://www.numbersleuth.org/worlds-gold/

The whole point of that Tidbits article was "the WSJ is probably wrong, because the idea that Apple would use 1/3 of the world's gold is an absurdity." Treating a reductio as if it were a proof is just deeply silly.

"His estimations — admittedly based on the Wall Street Journal predictions, not official figures"