Is 2014 the year Apple becomes a luxury brand?

Apple luxury
(Image credit: (Taylor Hill/Getty Images))

Late last year, Apple hired Angela Ahrendts, the CEO of Burberry — that Burberry — to be its senior vice president of online and retail stores. The proximate reason: Apple's public facing displays had grown tired, perhaps easily emulated by Sony, Microsoft and, soon, Samsung. Tech writers who covered the announcement correctly focused on what Ahrendts did for the sturdy British fashion house's sales.

Less noticed, or observed, was the context of the Burberry turnaround itself. I think Ahrendts's hiring tells us something else about Apple's goals for the near future. The company not only wants to refurbish its stores and web portals but also wants to make them more fashionable, more stylish, and by extension, Apple products more luxurious. I believe that Apple intends to focus on the prestige of its products, especially as it moves into wearable tech, even as it makes a play for a middle class market primarily interested in function.

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.