The price cuts happened right before Christmas and again right before Valentine's Day, which suggests that the discounts are loss leaders.
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7 month old new watch
- Thread starter Vegaspilot
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The price cuts happened right before Christmas and again right before Valentine's Day, which suggests that the discounts are loss leaders.
Another possible reason why the OP's watch was sitting on the shelf so long: old stock don't quite sell out, new stock arrives and gets piled in front of old stock, the stock in front gets sold, old stock stays on shelf, new stock arrives and gets piled in front... Repeat until somehow one day the old stock finally gets pulled out and sold.
Then they wouldn't have timed the price cuts to occur right before Christmas and Valentine's Day, especially considering that rumors pointing to the AW2 being imminent are pretty weak.
You just seem to want to argue and I do not. You believe what you want and I choose to believe that the watch did not sell near as well as Apple hoped. Done here.
They already sold more AW in the first 9 weeks than the original iPhone and iPad at launch, which is pretty good considering it's only a companion device. I think Apple is more realistic than you think. The only rationale you've provided for why you believe what you want to believe is that Best Buy and Target cut prices on the AW. However, the price cut would have been permanent (much like how they've permanently cut prices on non-Apple tablets after they fail to sell well) rather than timed twice with the holidays, which suggests a loss leader strategy.
A member mentioned that Apple has so far refused to reveal the sales number and I agree that (as well as the executives' reasoning for keeping the exact unit sales away from their competitors) makes them look suspicious. However, as someone pointed out, most pundits would be unsatisfied with any sales number if they don't come close to iPhone sales number, which is pretty unrealistic.
So I ended up exchanging the watch due to the speaker popping on screen light up and reboot. New one is a 2015 week 40, so quite a bit newer. So far it seems good, but noticed something else. The printing on the back is much lighter than the other one. More grey than black. No biggie, but just curious if they lightened it on newer ones or if this is a one off.
Yep, they lightened the font at some point because of some issues with the printing falling off some older ones.
I got my AWS for Christmas. My better half ordered it with an official Apple Dealer (not Apple Store) and received it shortly before Christmas. After reading this thread, and out of curiosity, I checked the manufacturing date on this site and got back Week 28 (July 2015) as an answer. So mine has been sitting 5 months in some storage somewhere on this planet before it got shipped to the store. I had to update it, too, btw, when setting it up. I just can't remember whether it was the major (2.0) or a minor (2.1) update.