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I saw somebody walk into a street lamp pole once because they were dinking around on their phone. The sound made me cringe, and by the way it did sound, I was surprised that they didn't get knocked out in the process.

They're lucky, the number of people I see people thoroughly engrossed walking through the rough part of SF with their latest iPhone. No wonder they get mugged.
 
What a flop...can people quiet down about this "failure" now?

If Apple released the pebble it would have the same sales. they have a fanbase that would buy this regardless. but they did not revolutionize or even alter the smart watch market like they claimed. they just released the same thing everyone else had and their marketing machine did their thing. so yes, a flop as of now
 
You're right. Sometimes I forget that people have not kept up with basic explanations that have been made dozens of times here over the years.



It is a legal requirement that Apple has bound itself to in its SEC 10-K filings. This has been explained many times before, so you're not the first to be unaware of it.

You can search for "sales shipments sec" in the forums, or simply read this post I made on the topic a while back.



Now who's being disingenuous :)

If you didn't understand something that basic, then the polite thing to do is ASK, not assume and attack.

But I admire your wordmanship nonetheless, just as I can technically admire the way that Apple so often meticulously phrases things in very clever - though yes, also very deceptive - ways.

(My favorite recent example: Apple claiming its watch case is thinner than it really is, by only citing the "case thickness" and ignoring the crystal and sensor sections above and below the metal part, a measurement that other watchmakers do not fail to include.)

I don't think it's as cut and dried as you claim. The SEC 10k uses the technical term "net sales" to refer to the phenomenon you are discussing, and they talk about "The Company recognizes revenue when persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, delivery has occurred, the sales price is fixed or determinable, and collection is probable....For online sales to individuals, for some sales to education customers in the U.S., and for certain other sales, the Company defers revenue until the customer receives the product because..."

So two points. Everywhere in the 10k they use this technical phrase net sales, whereas Tim was not trying to be cute and using a technical term. Tim says "On the watch, our June sales were higher than April or May. I realize that’s very different from some of what’s being written, but June sales were the highest."
He uses Sales, not Net Sales as his language.
More significantly, what Apple actually talk about and the promise in the 10k, is not a claim about when SALES are recognized, it's a claim about when REVENUE is recognized.
Basically the 10k is a statement about how to interpret the financial numbers that Apple is offering up, but those financial numbers are things like revenues and debt loads, they are not "operations numbers" like units manufactured and sold.

Which means, I think, that your claim that Cook's words don't mean their plain meaning is not proved. He MAY be trying to skate by on a technicality, but that has not been his style in the past, and I don't believe that the 10k constrains the meanings of his words the way you do. I think you are wrong here and are overthinking the issue.

My guess is that the real phenomenon is what one might expect: The true believers bought an aWatch on the day online sales began, they got their watches during April and May, then their friends and colleagues saw the watches in action and started to realize that, damn, they also wanted one. In other words, word of mouth and seeing the device in action are proving to be potent sales tools.
 
Yes, lets declare it a success now, because when the next quarter's results show a drop in revenue you won't be able to say that.

When the tide goes out, we'll see who's wearing bathers. Let's see if Tim et al are claiming the sales are "supply constrained" or if that phrase suddenly disappears.

Next quarter will be more difficult to discern since the new iPod will be in the mix. I'd expect the new model to at least stem the tide of declining iPod sales. It's highly unlikely there will be a drop in revenue, though. Virtually all the pre-orders were filled by early June, even the hard-to-find models like the Space Black Stainless Steel, so it seems to me that the in-store rollout led to an increase in sales.
 
If Apple released the pebble it would have the same sales. they have a fanbase that would buy this regardless. but they did not revolutionize or even alter the smart watch market like they claimed. they just released the same thing everyone else had and their marketing machine did their thing. so yes, a flop as of now
I doubt it. There aren't as many "true believers" as you think.

From all appearances they at least doubled the size of the market. That alone is altering it. At the same time, they released the smallest (by far) smartwatch product on the market and added features such as the easily swappable band.
 
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If Apple released the pebble it would have the same sales. they have a fanbase that would buy this regardless. but they did not revolutionize or even alter the smart watch market like they claimed. they just released the same thing everyone else had and their marketing machine did their thing. so yes, a flop as of now
I'd call it the Bernoulli Effect, where the people that buy it will encourage development, which will make it better for those held off by the limitations (perceived or real) of the current Watch.

I hemmed and hawed up until delivery, and once I put it on, I liked it. After 7 weeks, I love it. I guess, after 14 years, I missed wearing a watch, and the convenience it has (2 seconds to tell the time, and I don't have to worry about dropping it, plus all of the other niceties of the Apple Watch, like having my blood sugar readings on it).

WatchOS 2 has me looking forward, not only because I loved OS/2 (from IBM, back in the 90's), but because of the improved use of the Watch that it is promised to give.
 
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It captured nothing, it created it.

No one on Android was swapping their Android Watches for an Apple Watch...
 
I still wear a watch, but all my 20 something friends tell me no one wears a watch anymore except 40+ year old people. Is Apple going to put a watch on all these young people at the price they are asking? I guess we will find out in the next year or two. I'd love to see the age groups buying the majority of these Apple watches.
Maybe you need to tell them what time it is.
 
If the numbers were incredibly strong, we would all know the numbers. The numbers are being hidden because Apple is afraid of what the number will do to their stock price, even though the stock price is still down because the market is reacting to the perception that Apple is hiding the sales numbers because the number is a poor one. You would think that if the number wasn't a poor one, then Apple would release the number, otherwise they are basically hurting their own stock price unnecessarily.

It would also be very interesting to know when exactly the orders for each specific watch was placed. Is Apple counting a sale as occurring when the credit card was charged? In that case, so many orders that originally were purchased back in April were not counted as sales until the product shipped, be it May or June. I think it's very likely that orders of the watch itself, actually clicking the order button online, may tell a different tale in regards to how the watch has performed since its launch.

In the end, the Watch so far seems to have performed really how everyone thought that it would, including Apple itself, which decided to try and get out in front of it by placing it in the "other" category in case sales weren't so strong. If sales were stronger then expected, then no big deal, they could make it it's own group later on. Seems to me that Apple seems to be banking on the holiday season to rescue the product from the inevitable crash landing that is occurring/occurred already. Perhaps the iPhone 6S launch may help the product as well, but who out there who hasn't already purchased this thing will be ready to drop upwards of 500 dollars, in some cases, most likely more, and purchase a new phone and watch at the same time? I think that group is a small one. Seems to me that Apple thought it could get away with labeling this more in the "hobby" category, like the Apple TV, until the product had a chance to take off in the future when the tech became more mature. Which is a fine approach I suppose, but then don't make a such a huge fuss over the product, labeling it the next big thing, and try to manipulate some in your customer base by putting the watch on celebrities, artificially restricting supply (even by Apple standards), and overcharging to a rather insane degree on additional bands in order to just add more to the bottom line.

Frankly, the whole product has been rather off-putting and something that I would expect from a gigantic multi-national corporation.. Except Apple has always tried to distance itself from such conduct. It's always been about being "different" than the rest. Sorry, that was a rant and a half.
 
Scratching my head how anyone can use this as a meaningful data point. It's worthless because reality is AW is not competing with Android watches or vice versa since neither are compatible with the other's OS. (Google has said it is going to make Android Wear iOS compatible, but hasn't happened yet).

If one wanted to extrapolate something out of this date it might be that iPhone users are more receptive to Apple's inception of a SmartWatch but it also might be that Android users just are not early adopters or tech lovers by nature and own Android phones because their initial cost is less. Of course nothing is for certain which is why this data is really just garbage-in, garbage-out.
 
Wait... I thought we're supposed to dismiss any analyst projections about the Apple Watch. The rules change too quickly, I can't keep up.

They don't change at all - you basically have two-and-a-bit groups - those that dismiss anything if it's in Apple's favour or those that dismiss anything when it's negative for Apple (and the bit that doesn't care about either at all).
 
It captured nothing, it created it.

No one on Android was swapping their Android Watches for an Apple Watch...


This. You either buy an Apple Watch, an Android Wear Watch, or a Samsung Tizen watch. You don't just choose to go Apple when you're rocking an Android phone.

It's the same concept that people who are not looking for work are not counted toward the labor force.
 
Bizarrely I have not yet met one person who has either bought an Apple Watch or even knows someone who has. And in my job I meet a lot of the public. Yet conversely, everyone has or at least knows someone with an iPhone. Common sense has perhaps kicked in before their purchase? People maybe realised that to buy a product it has to fulfil a function and not just be a non-essential add-on to the iPhone. Which the Apple Watch basically is. That's my theory. Who knows? I'll tell you what. I'll make a point of asking them next time.

That's why individual anecdotal evidence is pretty useless to predict a product's success. I know about 15 people with an Apple Watch now. I am in the live event business and just got back from a series of events in Vegas. My client is a major consumer products company and as a reward for putting the events together, their show crew all got Watches and were enjoying using them to communicate with each other during the events as issues came up or just to let each other know where to meet up. I had fun teaching them how to use them. The A/V guy in charge of one event room also had an Watch and because he has to do a lot of building and teardown of A/V equipment he had a protective case around his watch. He said there are other A/V crew people who have them now because it's easier to quickly communicate while they are working assembling/tearing down a show set (lighting/sound/trusses/electrical/LED walls/drapes/computers, etc). The guys in charge of the rooms are constantly getting messages about issues they have to fix while they are in the middle of something else and not having to stop and dig out their phones is great for them. I almost didn't recognize his watch with the bumper on until I heard it do a message chime. I also recently attended a motion graphics conference where part of the registration package was an  device and many people, like myself, chose the watch. They also gave a few away during the conference. So I've come across a bunch of  watches in the wild and busy people enjoy the convenience they provide.
 
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Hell, why suffer? Buy one today. I had a Pebble, which I agree was nice and did the job, but aWatch is SO much nicer. Yes, the second model will be better, as will the third and the fourth. But every year you delay buying is also another year you are punishing yourself.
Eh?
No. I'm waiting for a better battery and certified water proofing. The Nike Fuelband was also noted for being water resistant too, and early tests showed it worked fine whilst swimming. But water ages some components over time so I'm happy waiting.
So no for the functions I need the Apple watch doesn't do what I want yet. I didn't want to go into the reasons why initially because I know how fanboys react, I did want to keep it polite. "Torturing yourself"... really?
 
If Apple released the pebble it would have the same sales. they have a fanbase that would buy this regardless. but they did not revolutionize or even alter the smart watch market like they claimed. they just released the same thing everyone else had and their marketing machine did their thing. so yes, a flop as of now
I'm really getting tired of hearing this nonsense. "Apple could release the iTurd and they would sell millions of them." Apple sells millions of gadgets because they are high quality and classy and people love them, period.
 
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