3 Million Units and $2 Billion in revenue (so far)

[extricated]

Thought you folks might enjoy this article.

Couple of interesting points:
By the analyst's estimates, the Edition sold in the thousands (40k), rather than millions, yet the revenue is almost on par with the Sport ($500 million vs. $675 million).

I thought the author had a good analogy on just what it took to manufacture this. I'll quote bits and pieces here, but I recommend checking out the blog to see his whole analogy.

Imagine that someone came to you and asked you to deliver a million Origami (that’s the art of Japanese paper folding) lobsters within the next month. ... How would you go about delivering on this order?

The task is clearly possible, but you face two problems: You can’t do it all yourself, and it’s a complex process.

...

All that said, this still is an achievable task given time and money. You could hire someone to document how to fold Origami lobsters. You could hire 10,000 people to do the folding. You could rent a big building where the people could do the work. You could buy the paper. You could hire people to gather up all the resulting lobsters.

...

Now let’s make this a little more realistic. As it turns out, we really want a million lobsters of two different sizes. Further, ordinary paper tears too easily and is the wrong color for Origami lobsters, so we’ve decided to make our own paper; that will require its own process ...

There’s no rush; you can deliver your million lobsters any time during the month, provided that you don’t mind people complaining that you are way too slow at getting this done. Oh, and you’ll be criticized in the international press for every failure to produce perfect lobsters.

...

Congratulations. You’ve just imagined the scenario that Apple executives had to create for the launch of Apple Watch, except that Apple products are orders of magnitude more complex than paper lobsters. Also billions of dollars of revenue hang on you getting this process right the first time; if you don’t, your company and possibly the entire category of smartwatches will be deemed a failure. No pressure at all, really.

The article I cited was also picked up by 9to5Mac.

 

[Evildude683]

Revenue from what? I haven't been charged for the watch yet! #

 

[jabingla2810]

The article I cited was also picked up by 9to5Mac.

And has been posted on this forum about 30 times in the past 4 days.

PS. Although I can't find those posts for some reason!

 

[extricated]

And has been posted on this forum about 30 times in the past 4 days.

PS. Although I can't find those posts for some reason!

I kind of wondered if someone had already posted here, so I did a quick scan beforehand. Like you, I couldn't find anything.
Maybe I wasn't using the right search terms.

Regardless, here it is!

 

[Cashmonee]

And again, it's just a guess. He may be right, he may be wrong, but his numbers are based on the earlier reported Slice numbers. So far, we have one company that uses a package tracking app for data coming out with a number and others running with it. No one, but Apple knows the numbers. If they have truly sold 1 million or 3 million, there will be an announcement very soon. If there is no numbers given, then I would be highly skeptical.

 

[matrix07]

If they have truly sold 1 million or 3 million, there will be an announcement very soon. If there is no numbers given, then I would be highly skeptical.

Apple will not announce number. If at all it will be obscure term like "great" which Tim Cook already did.

 

[Cashmonee]

Apple will not announce number. If at all it will be obscure term like "great" which Tim Cook already did.

Why not? If they truly sold 3 times as many in a week as Pebble has in it's entire existence, or close to 4.5 times as many as Android Wear, and grossed $3 billion, you really don't think they would say that? What would be the reason for holding back? They have always announced sales numbers when they break records.

EDIT: To be clear, I would not at all be surprised if the numbers are true, even if Apple doesn't announce anything. I just think it would be rather odd. It reminds me of Kindle sales, when Amazon wouldn't announce those, and it turned out they weren't selling as many as people thought, as I recall.

 

[matrix07]

Why not? If they truly sold 3 times as many in a week as Pebble has in it's entire existence, or close to 4.5 times as many as Android Wear, and grossed $3 billion, you really don't think they would say that? What would be the reason for holding back? They have always announced sales numbers when they break records.

The Apple Watch sales are included in "Others" category for financial reporting. The reason is clear. Apple will not tell you about number of units sold for strategic reason. This was decided since last financial reporting.