Apple Supplier Numbers Suggest Apple Watch Sales Are Below Analyst Expectations

[dannynjoni]

I think one thing that Apple does seem to understand more than other companies making smart watches these days is the "wearable" emphasis.

Which makes sense. This is a very new and budding category and unlike anything else Apple has done IMO. There will be a growth curve even at Apple but I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking for even a moment that this isn't the future. Wearable tech is most certainly a good bet, and Apple is poised to dominate it.

 

[bladerunner2000]

Anyone remember the iPod Hifi? The Apple watch is going to have the same fate.

 

[TwoBytes]

i'd buy one if it were 99 dollars/pounds but even then, i'd be thinking about it. Maybe Apple just need a price drop to bring it in line with other fitness trackers which have days of battery.. Apple dropped the price of the Apple TV to shift units. They should do the same with the watch considerably. Not a minor drop but make it really appealing.

 

[Mildredop]

Ok so let's extrapolate that theory.

Nah, let's not.

 

[tubular]

I said it before and I reiterate. The entire market for an Apple watch has theirs already.

Bananas. So to speak.

I don't know whether or not I'm in the market for an Apple Watch. What I'm sure of is that I'm not in the market for a first-generation Apple Watch, or a first-generation Apple Anything.

 

[dannyyankou]

On a somewhat related note, my watch is telling me I'm 120 calories away from my goal and I'm going to see a movie later, so I'm going to sneak in a quick run now.

 

[Night Spring]

i'd buy one if it were 99 dollars/pounds but even then, i'd be thinking about it. Maybe Apple just need a price drop to bring it in line with other fitness trackers which have days of battery.. Apple dropped the price of the Apple TV to shift units. They should do the same with the watch considerably. Not a minor drop but make it really appealing.

Fitness trackers that do only fitness tracking and no notifications cost $99. See, for example https://www.fitbit.com/store#one

Fitness trackers with notifications can cost from $250 and up. And Apple watch has nicer materials than those.

People who say Apple watch is overpriced need to do some price comparisons first before making such claims.

 

[6836838]

That's a fundamental misunderstanding of the device and the function of it. It quite literally is not cheap or an iPhone. It is small and on the wrist though, I'll give you that.

It's cheap compared to a proper watch and is cheaper than an iPhone.

 

[mdlooker]

If millions of a product is sold, how can the word "demise" be included in the same sentence?

So the number sold of this product is being compared/contrasted to the iPhone. Yes it's dependent on the phone but its something totally different. I've seen charts of the iPhone's beginning sold in low numbers but those numbers are only low compared to todays sales. Apple watch is sold in "low" numbers today until the product improves, much as the iPhone, iPods, MacBooks, and other products at their beginning.

Keep it in perspective.

 

[nick42983]

i wish i never bought mine :-/ early adoper hype was getting the best of me

Why do you say that? I bought mine 3 weeks ago and I really like it. It's not perfect but the combination of notifactions and activity/workout tracking has been great for me. Honestly I don't really care about any 3rd party apps at the moment since Apple's core apps do everything I need. If you're not using it for fitness purposes on top of notifications I can see why people wouldn't find it that useful.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Not convinced, if they were selling less than they forecast then they would have rolled them out to more countries by now...

 

[windywalks]

Anyone remember the iPod Hifi? The Apple watch is going to have the same fate.

Not by a long shot.
It just wasn't the perfect timing to release a sound system for the iPod back then. They're doing fine now with Beats wireless speakers and headphones.

As for the Watch, they just need to work on it some more. As it matures into a fully fledged platform for apps and health tracking and maybe gains a day or two in battery life, it's going to be massive.
It's way too early to judge it's success. This product category needs time to grow.

 

[windywalks]

Not convinced, if they were selling less than they forecast then they would have rolled them out to more countries by now...

Note, that there's also the issue of Siri not being enough of a polyglot, and the Apple Watch sans Siri and proper is just a nifty smartwatch.
Sure, there are a lot of countries that still didn't see it rolled out, but we are slowly nearing the end of Siri's language skills

 

[azentropy]

I'm curious, what about Apple's fitness offering interests you over other products? I find the fitness aspects of the Watch to be the least compelling, especially compared to other, dedicated fitness products.

That is kinda my point. It doesn't really have many advantages over other fitness type devices without GPS and water proofing.

Some of the things I like about it are some of the features my fitness bands don't - heart rate monitor, screen that could run apps like workout routines, mapping, score keeping, timer/stopwatch etc.

 

[samcraig]

Millions of people *did* start wearing watches because of the Apple Watch.

No millions of people bought one. You can't determine how many haven't been wearing watches before the Apple Watch. Therefor you can't say millions STARTED wearing a watch because of Apple.

 

[MNJohn]

We're all curious about how many Apple Watches Apple has sold, but with the company opting not to break out its Apple Watch sales numbers, all we have to go on are analyst guesses, information distilled from third-party sources, and tidbits of data that Apple has provided.

The latest data that hints at how the Apple Watch has fared comes from The Wall Street Journal, citing shipment information provided by analyst Mark Li from Taiwan's Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE) most recent earnings call. ASE is the company that builds the S1 package housing the many chips and sensors used in the Apple Watch.

An ASE subsidiary reportedly failed to meet its "break-even volume" of two million units shipped per month during the second quarter and does not believe it will meet that target in the third quarter, either. The company's failure to meet this target suggests the Apple Watch "is not selling nearly as well as some analysts expected," says The Wall Street Journal.Ahead of Apple's recent earnings call, analyst estimates of Apple Watch sales during its first quarter of availability ranged from 2.85 million to 5.7 million, averaging out to 4.07 million. After the call, many analysts adjusted their estimates, with the consensus largely changing to between 2.2 and 3 million units sold. Estimates continue to vary, however, with Strategy Analytics suggesting Apple sold 4 million units in a recent report.

During the call Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple Watch sales "exceeded [Apple's] expectations," despite supply continuing to trail demand at the end of the quarter. "We feel really great about how we did," he said. Apple CFO Luca Maestri hinted current revenue from the Apple Watch was "well over" $952 million, but he also did not provide insight into sales.

In the past, Tim Cook has warned against attempting to infer information from single data points from the company's supply chain due to its complexity.

Article Link: Apple Supplier Numbers Suggest Apple Watch Sales Are Below Analyst Expectations

The technical utility of the gen 1 Apple Watch reminds me of that of the Apple Newton, marginal at best, and being an expensive "solution" for a "problem" that doesn't seem to exist, at worst.

My guess is, if major "stand alone" improvements in the functionality are not incorporated into the gen 2 Apple Watch, the Apple Watch will be a evolutionary dead end and join the Newton in Apple's product graveyard relatively soon thereafter. At least the Newton was a stand alone device....

 

[Glideslope]

What a thread. So much emotion over logic. Tim is a Great COO, and a Terrible CEO. No vision, no soul. Profits, dividends, and happy shareholders. Nothing else. The Apple Watch will never make it past V2. Apple Music is the worst written Software in Apple's history.

Steve is face down in his grave. It may be too late to save Apple. Jony needs to separate himself in every possible way from Tim, and Eddy. It's up to him and Newsome. I would not be surprised to see Phil leave within 12m.

 

[doelcm82]

I said it before and I reiterate. The entire market for an Apple watch has theirs already.

The entire market for buying a first-gen Apple Watch in the first three months already has theirs.

 

[Keirasplace]

no surprise to me...Amazing a company like Apple can make such bad decisions at times, it never looked like something I'd want or I thought others might want, apart from the health connection.

You do realize that not meeting this company's breakeaven is 24M phones a year.... And that's before the holiday season. Care to revise your opinion about that bad Apple decision. There is so much inanity these days its not even funny.

 

[Archer1440]

I just spent a week participating in a major sporting event in Copenhagen hosting more than 120 countries, with more than 2000 total participants, and have seen Apple Watches on about every 10th person here.

I'm actually quite surprised at how many there are. The overwhelming majority are Sport models, and a large proportion of those seem to be space black with black sport bands. Of the many Apple watches I have seen, about 4/5ths are worn by men, and most are worn by coaches or support staff.

Many people who don't have one yet have had a substantial reaction when they see my stainless link model. The number one question is "what did that cost?", and most people asking that question have been women, and nearly all are athletes at this event. I nearly got mobbed by the Korean women's team here this morning when they saw the watch. Notably all of these women are genuine celebrities in their home nation.

While it's neither statistically significant nor scientific, it has been interesting to see first-hand.

 

[Newjackboy]

The market for this watch tanked big time back in late May/ early June

Once the hard core fans and well heeled bought theirs is April / may there is zero momentum left for the watch.

 

[CFreymarc]

The guy from Rolex (was it Rolex?) was right.

I'm quite curious to see how many of the Editon watches bit into the Rolex and Cartier sales the first half of this year.

 

[SeattleMoose]

Do people really expect millions to suddenly start wearing watches just because of the Apple Watch?

I hated watches 20 years ago and I still don't like ANYTHING on my wrist. That being said, I already have an electronic gizmo that goes everywhere with me and gives me notifications and such (and has a much bigger screen). My iPhone 4s...which I love.

 

[mantan]

It's neither a flop nor a home run. In today's world we have to label things winners or losers/successes or failures....no middle ground.

IMHO, as a first generation device it is overpriced and comes up short on functionality. Apple will sell millions (which by some measures is successful), but it's not revolutionizing the wearable market (the somewhat unrealistic bar of success expected by the public and hinted at by all the hype of from Apple.)

In the baseball terms, it's a groundball single hit up the middle.

This launch is being measured somewhat differently because it's Cook's first new product line. And while Jobs had his share of singles, doubles and strike outs - he also hit some mammoth home runs. And fairly or unfairly, Cook's impact will ultimately by the home runs jobs hit in inventing new product categories....not by 'keeping the trains running' by incremental iPhone updates that keep the Apple profit machine running.

In raw numbers and revenue, it'll be easy to spin this as a massive success. In terms of meeting the bar of what's expected from Apple when they go 'all-in' on a new product category, it can be seen as a bit of a disappointment.

 

[JHUFrank]

Absolutely correct. Until the tech is really convincing. The apple watch was just bad. Admittedly everyone's watch was just bad.

Doesnt matter if it sold more, buyer word of mouth helps these products the most.


Ive owned macs since 1998, 3 imacs 1 emac 1 macbook, 1 ibook 5 ipods 4 ipod touchs 1 iphone 5 lots of airports extreme. And i find no reason to plop 350 for this.