If they sell 14 Millions units in 2016 at an average price of $500 that's $7 billions, at the Apple usual 30% margins that $2.1 billions in profits. That's a flop that just about any other hardware manufacturer would proud to have on their balance sheet...
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Watch Predicted to Capture 50% Market Share in 2016 on 14 Million Sales
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If they sell 14 Millions units in 2016 at an average price of $500 that's $7 billions, at the Apple usual 30% margins that $2.1 billions in profits. That's a flop that just about any other hardware manufacturer would proud to have on their balance sheet...
Apple's existing user base and strong brand name instantly make any product they build eligible to be called a hit. With so much excess cash Apple can subsidize even the weakest product and use their masterful marketing to create a wonderful illusion.
Besides as long as iPhone sales hold up, nothing else matters. Once iPhones lose their luster, and they will, Apple will be forced to focus and innovate. With the huge advantage Apple has over others, they're good for decades ahead.
Besides as long as iPhone sales hold up, nothing else matters. Once iPhones lose their luster, and they will, Apple will be forced to focus and innovate. With the huge advantage Apple has over others, they're good for decades ahead.
Some will never be happy with battery life. To have the watch be completely independent of the phone, IMHO, will never happen. (OK, maybe never, but not within the next 5-7 years)
GPS, etc, will take, what I would believe a sizable toll on battery life. For my personal use, the watch lives up to my expectations.
It's an accessory at this point. I'm sure it will grow as the iPhone has, but more than likely at a slower pace, once again, due to the current battery restriction. Apple, as always, will make the software more efficient, however that too, will take time. It's a brand new category and we are only within the first version and only the second software upgrade.
GPS, etc, will take, what I would believe a sizable toll on battery life. For my personal use, the watch lives up to my expectations.
It's an accessory at this point. I'm sure it will grow as the iPhone has, but more than likely at a slower pace, once again, due to the current battery restriction. Apple, as always, will make the software more efficient, however that too, will take time. It's a brand new category and we are only within the first version and only the second software upgrade.
Sales in the US are half of estimated global sales for 2015 (7M+), so how the hell are these pulled out of the air.
The number of smart phones users and Iphone users in the US is well know, everything else is simple math.
Apple products have a better penetration on the coasts (NYC, the one you just cited so much is part of that);
penetration there is also well known.
I didn't have to cite numbers exact to the nth decima to make my point; within this argument, my "precision" was large enough to make the point. That the current sales and the nature of the device would make it easy to not see them.
Also, read better next time. I didn't say everyone who bought it was wealthy; said the most likely buyers of first iteration devices are those people. The adoption curve for this kind of thing, who buys them, is indisputable; you can bitch me out all you can. The first Iphone, and most similar gadgets, have the same type of people mostly buying them.
That in NYC (a place of great Apple penetration), that bell curve would also include gadget oriented people making less money than elsewhere (which considering the cost of living would still be pretty high) goes without saying.
I'm pretty sure that if I go to the Montreal Athletic club downtown I'm going to find much more people with this watch than if I go to some random suburban gym in the Midwest. In Apple Iphone owning engineers I know, around 1 in 6 own an Apple Watch, while only one had one (that I saw) at a course I took at Mcgill (most students there were business professionals). (which means 3% of the class).
Impressive but not all that surprising. It's the only watch able to do what it does based the permissions iOS is able to grant other hardware. Right now nobody could create a watch that links to iOS that had the feature set the apple watch had, except apple. Still, I must give credit where it's due. I honestly didn't expect it to overtake quote so quickly.
[doublepost=1458280953][/doublepost]
My friend has the first gen Motorola android watch (the name escapes me right now but that's beside the point) and he can't get through the day. He received dozens of texts and emails throughout the day, and loves the device outside of battery. I bring this up because I'm not picking on Apple here. Most smart watches seems to have this Achilles heel.
Conversely I have a fitbit surge. No. I'm absolutely not calling it a smart watch despite others who do call it that. It can receive (not bot send) texts and notify incoming phone all. The battery lasts seven days on a full charge (if you charge it about ten minutes during your daily shower it's is perpetually full) and five hours on GPS. I think those numbers are more than reasonable (particularly the regular use time). GPS I think is also reasonable for what most would use it for (tracking runs and biking excursions that don't last all day). It does have a monochrome screen, so that's absolutely incomparable to the Apple Watch really. It is somewhat larger, and I guess that's a matter of preference, but I don't find it bothersome.
I guess what I'm saying is I think there may be room for a larger actually sport oriented device. I think the Apple Watch Sport is more a name for the entry level device than anything anyway. It's simply made of cheaper materials and sounded better than Apple Watch budget edition. It's not more suitable for sports than any of the other Apple watches are. In fact, the screen scratches easier so one might argue it being less suitable.
I've seen some intriguing additional battery straps coming to market that claim to double the life of the watch while not feeling much more bulky or heavier. I think that's also a direction that Apple could go to explore a bigger battery. At the end of the day, $350 for the entry level device that might not even get me through a day of use just isn't appealing. I can see how it be popular and attractive for some with different needs/wants/lifestyles as me.
[doublepost=1458280953][/doublepost]
I'm one who isn't happy with the battery life but mostly because I see my wife's watch in the 30s after an 8-10 hour day and she is hardly using it for anything other than telling the time. She will end texts I city as well, but chooses to respond 100% on her iPhone. What on earth is draining the battery that fast? I really couldn't say, but from what I read here, results aren't atypical. She doesn't even have apps outside of stock apps.
My friend has the first gen Motorola android watch (the name escapes me right now but that's beside the point) and he can't get through the day. He received dozens of texts and emails throughout the day, and loves the device outside of battery. I bring this up because I'm not picking on Apple here. Most smart watches seems to have this Achilles heel.
Conversely I have a fitbit surge. No. I'm absolutely not calling it a smart watch despite others who do call it that. It can receive (not bot send) texts and notify incoming phone all. The battery lasts seven days on a full charge (if you charge it about ten minutes during your daily shower it's is perpetually full) and five hours on GPS. I think those numbers are more than reasonable (particularly the regular use time). GPS I think is also reasonable for what most would use it for (tracking runs and biking excursions that don't last all day). It does have a monochrome screen, so that's absolutely incomparable to the Apple Watch really. It is somewhat larger, and I guess that's a matter of preference, but I don't find it bothersome.
I guess what I'm saying is I think there may be room for a larger actually sport oriented device. I think the Apple Watch Sport is more a name for the entry level device than anything anyway. It's simply made of cheaper materials and sounded better than Apple Watch budget edition. It's not more suitable for sports than any of the other Apple watches are. In fact, the screen scratches easier so one might argue it being less suitable.
I've seen some intriguing additional battery straps coming to market that claim to double the life of the watch while not feeling much more bulky or heavier. I think that's also a direction that Apple could go to explore a bigger battery. At the end of the day, $350 for the entry level device that might not even get me through a day of use just isn't appealing. I can see how it be popular and attractive for some with different needs/wants/lifestyles as me.
I do like mine. I hope they don't do their usual thinness madness. To me a mans watch should cast a shadow. My other watch is a g-shock
As said when somebody posted an "initial sales" chart here: Totally different and not comparable point of depature when it comes to customer base, brand awareness and advance trust in the new "big thing" by Apple back then and now.
Last edited:
No problems whatsoever with the Watch battery. It's designed to have plenty of juice for one full day of very intense use, and to be recharged every night.
It takes an additional second to attach the magnetic charger, compared to just put on the night table my Rolex. Battery is usually at >50% when I go to sleep, despite I workout every day with Watch monitoring on.
Currently I'm charging my 6" dumbphone connected to my dumbwatch 2 times per week (and it is inconvinient, but phone could survive a week only when it is not connected to watch). And real dumbphones need to be changed once in a month.
Try un-pairing it and re-pairing it if you haven't already. I have a lot of apps on mine, run Apple Music most of the day on my iPhone and control it with the watch, get notifications, using it to control lighting, etc.. and have over 30 percent left when I drop it on the charger before going to bed. Before trying the pairing/unpairing process, I was burning over 50 percent by noon when I ran Apple Music on my phone. I was having to take it off at noon and charge it for 30 minutes or so just to get through the entire day.
THIS. The Apple Watch is a nifty device with a lot of potential, but I bought a Fitbit Blaze instead, due to exactly what you said. The battery life on the Apple Watch is crap and it's just too expensive. Sure, the Blaze isn't perfect and doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the Apple Watch, but it does what I need it to do and does it well. I like the sleep tracking feature, something that simply wouldn't be possible with the Apple Watch. Charge it while I'm in the shower and it's good for days on end. I see the Apple Watch as something similar to the first generation iPhone. It's nifty, but limited and expensive. I hopped onboard when the 3G came out because many of those problems were solved. Apple needs to update the hardware in the Apple Watch, boost the battery life, and bring the price down a bit.
Why isn't sleep tracking possible with the AW? News to me as I've been using it that way for months...
I agree with Keira that hers are correct calculation methods. (Minor note; 2015 sales were ~12 million, the 14 is predicted for this year.)
There are about 100 million iPhone users in the US, and polls taken before the Apple Watch came out indicated that only about 5% of owners would be interested in an Apple smartwatch.
So anything over that, is gravy.
Last edited:
If you want to make-up comparisons, you can always move the bar so the everything is a failure, or that everything is a success, thus resulting in a nonsense opinion. The actual numerically comparible value is dollar sales (estimated if needed and adjusted for inflation).
Thank you for the tip. My wife has a 12+ hour inventory to tackle on Sunday. I'll set it up for her and see how it does.
Let me know if it works. I put mine on at 8AM this morning and it is 10:23PM right now and I have 56 percent battery left.
Because I have other things that I'd like to track throughout the day and leaving it charging for 1+ hours every 12 hours or so isn't something I want to do.
I won't go so far. However, while Android devices look like actual watches, this thing is hideous.And yet every time I read a story about the watch, people call it a flop and say Tim should either resign for it or discontinue the product. Amazing.
Hmm. I've only seen ONE Apple Watch in the real world so far, and until now I have not yet heard or read one convincing reason why anybody should buy such a gadget. It even fails miserably at its "killer application": Showing the time. A watch whose battery doesn't even last 24 hours is rather useless.
-- If -- the Apple Watch could fully replace the iPhone instead of relying on it, -- THEN -- this could have been the next big thing. But, naturally, they were afraid of cannibalizing their cash cow, and only threw out a useless, castrated add-on device for the iPhone.
At this point, the entire smartwatch market has nothing interesting to offer. The only wearable so far that looks interesting - albeit not for consumer purposes - is Microsoft's HoloLens.
You have it wrong. Apple isn't afraid of cannibalizing their cash cow, as long as it's their own products that's doing the cannibalizing. The iPhone cannibalized iPod sales, etc.
The problem is a smartwatch with a tiny screen is a poor substitute for texting/speaking discreetly.
Last edited:
In my area, NY metro the aw is all over the place. As to the use case, that's an individual decision. I know people who don't own cell phones, so clearly what's important to people varies.