Apple Watch Demand Slides Significantly in June as Launch Momentum Wanes

[redman042]

Some company that "tracks emails for a selected number of purchasers" does a data extrapolation and claims to know from that how many watches are selling. Said company reports huge drop off. Media and internet commenters jump in and declare the watch a failure and Tim Cook inept.

Why am I not surprised?

I really like my Apple Watch. So does my wife. It is a 1.0 product with some issues and it's not for everyone. But I am quite certain Apple is in this for the long haul and will slowly but surely improve the product and gain broader interest. Just like the iPhone. They certainly have enough cash on hand to keep at this for a long time.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Apple is deliberately withholding supply to make it look like the AW is still in demand.

 

[ces1965]

The watch pays for itself with just three things for me. Showing the temperature and my next appointment on the face, and always having the right time no matter what time zone. Then there's the fitness tracking and getting all my texts without grabbing the phone. Oh and the walking directions without holding the phone out in the open on the street. And the timer. Everything else is gravy. I won't bother with a regular watch for just the time (manually set) but I will wear this.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

Likely something to do with people realizing how much of a gimmick the watch is.

As if our phones couldnt do everything and anything the watch could.... and then some?

They were saying the same thing in 1511, when Peter Henlein came out with his crazy "clock-watch" thingy.

Famous Quotes -
- "We already have these time accounting things on the church towers!" - Father Schwarz
- "They're too expensive! 10Marks for a clock you take with you?" - Anonymous HouseFrau
- "It does everything the sun does, and who needs to tell time at night? That's when you are supposed to be sleeping!" - Tomas Franken
- "There are people starving in Nurnburg, and we have people making these silly things?" - Albert Furter

 

[HenryDJP]

What difference does it make how other watches are doing?

Do you think companies console themselves over terrible launches because other company's did worse? Apple was supposed to revolutionize the category like it did with the iPod, iPhone, and the iPad and now it's grouping the sales from its watch with the Apple TV and Beats accessories just to hide how dismal the Apple Watches launch was.

I'm just hoping they learn from this and make substantial improvements when they launch the next generation.

Actually it does matter how the other companies are doing. I mean, according to you it's Apple's responsibility to make sure we as consumers get a revolutionary product. If the other companies stepped up and made some large steps in innovation then Apple could learn from them and make a better product. They have no competition in the smartwatch world. Isn't the age old saying, "Competition is great for the consumer"?

 

[Lesser Evets]

Apple jumped the shark when Jobs departed. Ritchie Cunningham has left the show, but diehards are still watching.

Apple should be spending much more effort honing their software, but they aren't, and there are problems galore. Apple should be paying attention to their computers and improving the products more often. You can't even get a modern Apple monitor anymore.

The watch is a redundant trinket. Sure, it sells. It doesn't sell well enough to push Apple forward with increasing momentum. There is trouble in the top due to lack of vision. I expect 3 or 4 more years before someone gets itchy in the money-bags dept. and investors start jumping ship.

 

[srosgen]

That was my first thought bout that. Maybe this statistic is only reflecting strong in-store momentum for the watch?

Maybe.. but probably not. If the watch was generating huge in store sales don't you think Apple's hype generating machine would be trumpeting its success (not lumping its sales results together with other minor products in an "others" category). When sales of a product become a footnote in financial reporting, it's not generally indicating a major success.

 

[0098386]

I had one on preorder but it was just taking too long. Turned out that period was wonderful for stopping my desire for one. Now I'm more than content to wait for Gen 2.
My Pebble survives another year!

 

[bbeagle]

I'm not surprizes at all.
it failed because:

My Apple Watch is the best thing I've bought in years. I love it.

Doesn't seem a failure to me.

 

[BaldiMac]

Helloo! Is this thing on? The data implies over $10 billion first year sales. With great margins.

How does this equate to a failure?

STEP 1. Imagine a number.
STEP 2. Don't tell anyone the number.
STEP 3. Ignore the number and claim flop because you don't like the product.

 

[Quu]

I think the watch is alrite but even the cheapest 42mm Sport is £330. You can get an iPod Touch 16GB for £159 or a 64GB iPod Touch for £249. Straight from Apples online store.

I'm comparing these two products prices because they share all the same category of components except for Force Touch and the Actuator in the watch that provides taps. The watch is smaller, the parts are cheaper the display is cheaper, there is physically less aluminium used in its construction.

But it costs twice as much. And this is just for the aluminum version. Looking at the steel which to my eye is a much more beautiful Apple Watch and the one I prefer that's £519-£590 for that one. Before looking at the black link version which is £900+

Steel isn't worth that much. In every other product like a computer case buying Aluminum actually costs more, of course very few computer cases are shined to a mirror finish is that worth £250-£300 price premium over Aluminium? Maybe the sapphire screen makes up the other £250? I doubt it though.

If it did more the price wouldn't be such a big deal to me, but it does very little, and that makes it a very hard decision for a new category of device that is designed to save you a few seconds here and there throughout the day.

Just my opinion of course, I know many are very happy with their watches and I do like it, just I don't like the prices.

 

[powerslave65]

My Apple Watch is the best thing I've bought in years. I love it.

Doesn't seem a failure to me.

My Apple Watch is the best thing I've bought in years. I love it.

Doesn't seem a failure to me.

 

[bbeagle]

What difference does it make how other watches are doing?

Because you usually compare how one company's product is doing vs. competition.

You don't just compare numbers in a vacuum.

Lookie here - I can show you a graph of snow blower sales per month - OMG! The last 3 months Honda snow blowers sales have fallen off a cliff! Honda is in trouble!

Doesn't mean much unless you compare to competitors, right?

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

As I said in a previous post, why insult someone just because they own a product you don't like? That's ridiculous.

And okay, here's a pat on the back for him being right about Apple Watch sales...

Being right about a subset of the data that tracks e-mail usage, where there are still questions about the veracity of the data and how it correlates to the actual sales.

He may be right (I may be crazy*), and great for him, but that's like predicting the end of the world. You can predict it, and predict it, and if you're right, you get the right to say, "I told you so."

*For you Billy Joel fans...

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

You can say that again...

 

[TMRJIJ]

maybe they can get back to making good computers again... vs what they have been churning out over the past few years!!!

Before Tim Cook:
MacBook Pros that cost around £1500, with 4GB RAM, standard HDD, OS X Lion (which people didn't like.) and upcoming release of Mountain Lion (Mixed Reaction)

Now:
MacBook Pros that cost around £1200 with more power, 8 GB Ram, SSDs with read/write speeds that exceed that of 2xSATA SSDs in RAID, OS X Yosemite (Mixed Reactions) with El Capitan coming this fall (Good Reaction)

What is wrong with our computers?

 

[BaldiMac]

Maybe.. but probably not. If the watch was generating huge in store sales don't you think Apple's hype generating machine would be trumpeting its success (not lumping its sales results together with other minor products in an "others" category). When sales of a product become a footnote in financial reporting, it's not generally indicating a major success.

No. Because Apple announced that they would not be announcing Apple Watch sales number separately long before it went on sale.

 

[Rogifan]

No argument. But I also feel that if sales were really strong, we would have seen a press release by now touting how Apple just sold the most wearables in history or more Watches opening weekend than Pebble has sold to date, etc. The silence is telling.

We'll have to agree to disagree. When Apple said it was grouping Watch in the "other" category I knew never to expect sales figures. Apple wants to keep mix and ASP confidential. The minute they throw out sales figures some analyst is going to use bogus data like this to estimate how much of each collection was sold and what the average selling price is. The fact is wearables is in its infancy as a category. And Apple plays the long game with everything they do. There's no need to provide sales figures on a product cateogry that isn't (yet) material to the financials.

 

[srosgen]

Actually it does matter how the other companies are doing. I mean, according to you it's Apple's responsibility to make sure we as consumers get a revolutionary product. If the other companies stepped up and made some large steps in innovation then Apple could learn from them and make a better product. They have no competition in the smartwatch world. Isn't the age old saying, "Competition is great for the consumer"?

As a shareholder in Apple, yes, I think it is their job to deliver revolutionary products – doing so under Steve Jobs is what made Apple what it is today – and Apple has far larger budgets and deeper resources than anyone else in this field so I did have high expectations for Apple.

Is your point that Apple should be satisfied with being only to be slightly better than a bunch of companies that no one has heard of? Or that Apple can only be expected to innovate if it's competitors do so first? Neither of these really makes sense to me.

 

[6836838]

I don't think cheap accessory news should be front page.

 

[splash5]

70%+ of Apple's revenue is the iPhone. They're not much interested in computers these days.

shame as this is

I SECOND THAT! I want the Apple I know to be a computer maker first, a phone maker second, and after you perfect that, go off and conquer other markets. But some of the weak computers that have come out lately..... My AppleCare on my 2012 rMBP 15" just ran out and I'm keeping this until it dies. Thankfully for me, I've had about $4.5k of repairs on Apple's dime for this machine.. displays, logic boards, battery,etc. So it's really like a new computer. The only thing original you can see from the outside is the bottom case. Just about everything else has been replaced. It runs like a champ. There is nothing that compels me to sell it and upgrade. What, for a computer with a single port? Nah...

im in the same boat... the last batch of mac have been serviced a lot due to the poor quality (mac used to be built well thats why they cost more than most pc's but now they are just a fashion accessory for most), I've got many macs here but with the current poor offerings i think we will be switching back to windows. i can get a much higher spec with a better build quality from those and i won't need to pay the extra $800+ for the light up apple on the back. also now apple have dropped all their "pro products" we have no reason to stay with them. i guess if its not an iPhone they don't care anymore... i can't wait for another company to make a i-phone killer, maybe then they will realize they should have looked after there loyal customers.

 

[srosgen]

No. Because Apple announced that they would not be announcing Apple Watch sales number separately long before it went on sale.

Sorry, in all the hype surrounding the launch I never realized Apple said they were going to hide the sales results of the watch. Interesting that they were back-pedalling before they even launched.

 

[spoljnr01]

Good device for first generation it would get better with the next versions.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

They're onto something, but it's not quite there yet. Give it another generation or two. Remember that the first iPhone wasn't an immediate home run - Apple had to drop the price just a few months after launch for it to begin selling.

I will say that I've seen far more Apple Watches than all other smart watches combined in the time since the Apple Watch launched. I've seen a single Pebble and 4 Apple Watches... So I think Apple's is the leading Smart Watch right now.

 

[sracer]

Don't underestimate stupid people

Exactly. It's not rocket science. The ability to sell something for more than one paid for it simply says that there is somebody out there who was willing to pay for it at that price... assuming that it is because demand greatly exceeds supply is pretty silly.