Forecasting Issues: Did Apple underestimate the popularity of the Apple Watch?

[Bryan Bowler]

People are blindly accepting this silence from Apple and I can't figure out why.

Because 99%+ of Apple Watch buyers could care less. Apple gave me a window that it would arrive and as always, Apple delivered early. End of story.

I have WAY more important things in life that occupy my time then to sit around and be as dramatic as some of you are about having to wait for a product that you ordered...and you knew up front how long it would take before you clicked the order button.

Sorry, but all of the complaining makes you and others look like drama queens.

 

[Teach4]

Apple really dropped it big. They have not sent out any of the leather loop configurations for some unknown reason. I ordered a 42mm SS with black loop. There is a thread here for those like me and a lot are mad. It almost does seem they are holding back some. I feel like the leather loop shunted a lot of people out of the shipping line and for who knows how long. And then look at all those they have "gifted" to celebrities, that is ridiculous. I called this morning and talked to a supervisor and expressed my frustration that none of the loop orders have shipped, some which ordered on the 10th while people just now ordering get told June and the bang switched to overnight. Don't continue to say it is the order in which orders are placed.

 

[SixtyK]

Sorry, but all of the complaining makes you and others look like drama queens.

For the most part I agree with you, but the thing is if people want to complain, that is certainly their right. I haven't told anybody to stop complaining... but shouldn't I be allowed to offer an opposing viewpoint? Isn't that how a debate works?

 

[striders]

Apple really dropped it big. They have not sent out any of the leather loop configurations for some unknown reason. I ordered a 42mm SS with black loop. There is a thread here for those like me and a lot are mad. It almost does seem they are holding back some. I feel like the leather loop shunted a lot of people out of the shipping line and for who knows how long. And then look at all those they have "gifted" to celebrities, that is ridiculous. I called this morning and talked to a supervisor and expressed my frustration that none of the loop orders have shipped, some which ordered on the 10th while people just now ordering get told June and the bang switched to overnight. Don't continue to say it is the order in which orders are placed.

Well said.

I am sure if Apple change the 05/08 delivery date to end of May or June, we complained, people like SixtyK will still say "Why are you complaining? It's just a watch".

At the end of the day, Apple did mess up somewhere. I hope if enough people actually let Apple know about this (chat, email, etc) they may try to prevent this from happening. And that's a good thing.

 

[nfl46]

Forecasting Issues: Did Apple underestimate the popularity of the Apple Watch?

I really don't see how anyone can defend Apple with this launch. It's getting out of hand, and they know it. By far, the most awkward release yet. It's shocking to see the production date of some of these watches from 4/24. Da f were they doing this wholeee time. Racking up production the month of the release is just plain dumb, especially with a new category.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

For the most part I agree with you, but the thing is if people want to complain, that is certainly their right. I haven't told anybody to stop complaining... but shouldn't I be allowed to offer an opposing viewpoint? Isn't that how a debate works?

My reply was not directed at you or anything you said.

Everyone can absolutely have an opinion and express that opinion. I'm not against that at all. But I am calling out those that keep proclaiming that Apple has done something massively wrong and everyone deserves an explanation, when in fact, Apple has not done anything wrong here.

 

[striders]

Forecasting Issues: Did Apple underestimate the popularity of the Apple Watch?

Hmmm.. Not sure if Apple did thing MASSIVELY wrong, but they DID something wrong that resulted in this brouhaha with order not being fulfilled in order. You have to at least accept that.

Now, some people maybe too eager and whine more, but most are venting frustration and that's to be expected.

I still have to wait for the watch, but I am of course frustrated seeing those with the same exact order getting their watch early.

Unfortunately, some people like SixtyK is not offering an opposing viewpoint, judging by the sentences he put together in the post, but asking why we have whiners. He is asking if Apple ever guarantee delivery and that's the wrong question: we are not talking about guarantee, but trying to find out why others who have much later delivery timeline got their watch much earlier.

SixtyK said this is a "debate". I don't see the purpose of this thread as a debate...but facts finding. Look at the title of the thread..

 

[Appl3FTW]

That's all nice. Thanks for repeating over and over. Except there was no "launch window" in the TV ads. Or on their website. Or in the press release.

Please stop making stuff up that did not happen BEFORE THE PREORDERS WENT LIVE to try and prove some point. There is no reason to do so. Apple screwed up and pissed off plenty of people. It's really sad people would even try to defend it with some made up launch window that didn't even exist until after preorders went live.

Omfg thanks, u nailed it.... Excuses doesn't fly anymore. This launch was botched and is horrible. 4/24 advertising is a joke!

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Hmmm.. Not sure if Apple did thing MASSIVELY wrong, but they DID something wrong that resulted in this brouhaha with order not being fulfilled in order. You have to at least accept that.

Now, some people maybe too eager and whine more, but most are venting frustration and that's to be expected.

I still have to wait for the watch, but I am of course frustrated seeing those with the same exact order getting their watch early.

Unfortunately, some people like SixtyK is not offering an opposing viewpoint, judging by the sentences he put together in the post, but asking why we have whiners. He is asking if Apple ever guarantee delivery and that's the wrong question: we are not talking about guarantee, but trying to find out why others who have much later delivery timeline got their watch much earlier.

SixtyK said this is a "debate". I don't see the purpose of this thread as a debate...but facts finding. Look at the title of the thread..

Thanks. Finally some light. These self righteous people in this forum are being hypocritical. The self proclaimed adults who attack "whiners". Oh the irony.

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I really don't see how anyone can defend Apple with this launch. It's getting out of hand, and they know it. By far, the most awkward release yet. It's shocking to see the production date of some of these watches from 4/24. Da f were they doing this wholeee time. Racking up production the month of the release is just plain dumb, especially with a new category.

People who are willing to wait til June? Wow who would wait that long... No wonder there's so much cancellation. People on the fence would then realize it by then. Buyers remorse I tell you. This really is a stupid marketing/release.

 

[die444die]

Here's one: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/21152271/. My email confirmation is 12:08 AM.

Checking his post history, he's saying he ordered it at 12:07 - since he's not listing the seconds, I'm not assured that he knows how to check the mail headers to get the actual timestamp and is probably using the time his mail client received the message instead.

Where are the people who ordered your model and got a May/June date who have already shipped that you're so upset about?

 

[profmjh]

I have my watch. It arrived on 24/4. I ordered a charger at the weekend, it's already shipped. My point: I'm not bitter.

This launch has been a shambles. I want a second band. Milanese loop. They're not shipping till some unspecified date in June. That's pathetic.

If you think Apple hasn't messed this up then you must believe that this is how they planned it. Really? No supply for months? That was the plan? Seriously?

What? You think predicting supply is hard? That Apple woke up on 10th April and thought "Gosh! What a totally surprising and utterly unoredictably high number of orders. Who knew our products were popular? Let's pretend 24th April means 24th April to 8th May. No-one will notice. They probably won't want to buy extra straps for a couple of months so we should be fine there."

 

[matrix07]

This launch has been a shambles. I want a second band. Milanese loop. They're not shipping till some unspecified date in June. That's pathetic.

I feel your pain but just think about it a bit. Apple didn't make Milanese loop to sell as separate band only. The majority of it they sell with the watch. If you check out the Show off thread you'll see many SS with milanese. So yes it's possible that the demand exceed Milanese loop supply.

 

[Cuyler]

In Monday's earnings call, Tim Cook avoids a direct answer to the question posed by this thread. He does say demand is hard to gauge and they were able to deliver more watches than they originally anticipated — that might indicate they had underestimated the watch's popularity.

Supply and demand... right now demand is greater than supply. We're working hard to remedy that. Made progress over the last week or so, able to deliver more customers on Apple Watch than we had initially anticipated. We're going to keep doing that and we've already sent some notes out today moving customers in vs what we had communicated to them previously. Generally happy that we're moving on with the ramp. It is a new product for us, with any new product you wind up taking some time to fully ramp. Having said that, I think we're in a good position and by sometime in late June we currently anticipate being in a position where we could begin to sell the Apple Watch in additional countries. That's our current plan. From a demand point of view, it's hard to gauge when you don't have product n stores, we're filling orders completely online at the moment. Customer response from people that have gotten theirs have bene overwhelming positive. We're far ahead of where we expected to be from an Application point of view, to give you a comparison, when we launched iPhone, we had about 500 apps ready when we launched iPad, we had about 1000. Internal goal was to be able to beat the 1000 level. We thought it would be great if we could do that by a little bit, as we mentioned, 3500 apps in the app store for the watch. We couldn't be happier about how things are going from that point of view. We are learning quickly about customer preferences between the different configurations. Much larger breadth of possibilities for customers than in our other products. In some cases we called that well, in some cases we're making adjustments to get in line with demand. Confident that this is something we understand how to do. Happy with where we are, looking forward to expanding into more countries in late June.

I'm surprised they expect to start delivering to more countries by late June. Does that mean they expect to fulfill the current preorders by then?

 

[GizmoDVD]

I don't think any of the advertising or the press release matters. The only date that's important is the one you see when you pre ordered.

And at 11:59 (or whenever the site went down), the watch was Available 4/24. No one where did it give a launch window. No where did it say they would randomly pick people to ship out orders, regardless of who ordered first.

 

[SixtyK]

And at 11:59 (or whenever the site went down), the watch was Available 4/24. No one where did it give a launch window. No where did it say they would randomly pick people to ship out orders, regardless of who ordered first.

And the watch was available on the 24th as evidenced by the people who received their watches on that day. Unfortunately, the number ordered greatly exceeded the supply available. That has been known to happen with the launch of a highly anticipated product, and not just to Apple. It's a bummer for those of us who have to wait for our watch, our phone, our gaming console, our new gadget... but it happens.

People keep saying Apple should have planned better, but does anyone actually believe that Apple EXPECTED to outsell the entire smartwatch market within its first few hours of presales? Because that's exactly what happened. OP asks if Apple underestimated the popularity of the Apple Watch?

Everybody did.

 

[striders]

Forecasting Issues: Did Apple underestimate the popularity of the Apple Watch?

Checking his post history, he's saying he ordered it at 12:07 - since he's not listing the seconds, I'm not assured that he knows how to check the mail headers to get the actual timestamp and is probably using the time his mail client received the message instead.



Where are the people who ordered your model and got a May/June date who have already shipped that you're so upset about?

Well, I ordered mine around 12:05

I am not going to search the hundreds of posts I read since 04/23 just for you. If you don't believe me, you can search it yourself. Look under the different threads that post delivery dates, timeline, etc. or even Google it.

You think I am making this up? Smh....

 

[die444die]

Well, I ordered mine around 12:05

I am not going to search the hundreds of posts I read since 04/23 just for you. If you don't believe me, you can search it yourself. Look under the different threads that post delivery dates, timeline, etc. or even Google it.

You think I am making this up? Smh....

Yep, I did and haven't found anything credible. Just this morning someone posted a screenshot 'proving' theirs was an xx:08: order that has shipped, and they were using the time stamp that their email client showed instead of the one from apples servers in the header. Many people who are posting their times here are not using the correct time stamp to do so.

 

[Arran]

How about if Apple sells the next watch by birth-date lottery for the first few months?

For each day of online ordering, you can only apply to buy a watch if your birth day is some randomly chosen number in the range 1-31. Would that smooth out the bumps?

 

[Arran]

Well said.

I am sure if Apple change the 05/08 delivery date to end of May or June, we complained, people like SixtyK will still say "Why are you complaining? It's just a watch".

If Apple changed the date after you'd ordered then you'd have a valid complaint. If Apple miss the quoted delivery window than you'd also have a valid complaint. Neither of those have occurred. Yet.

And as for your statement; "people like SixtyK would say...", you really have to wait until he actually says that before you respond. I know you're in a rush to speak, but there's no point in putting your words in other's mouths. You're simply talking to yourself at that point.

 

[striders]

If Apple changed the date after you'd ordered then you'd have a valid complaint. If Apple miss the quoted delivery window than you'd also have a valid complaint. Neither of those have occurred. Yet.



And as for your statement; "people like SixtyK would say...", you really have to wait until he actually says that before you respond. I know you're in a rush to speak, but there's no point in putting your words in other's mouths. You're simply talking to yourself at that point.

I didn't complaint for that, I complaint why some people with later delivery timeline got it earlier than me.

----------

How about if Apple sells the next watch by birth-date lottery for the first few months?



For each day of online ordering, you can only apply to buy a watch if your birth day is some randomly chosen number in the range 1-31. Would that smooth out the bumps?

Now you are talking to yourself.

This thread started to discuss the forecasting issue as one of he probable cause of the mixed order delivery timeline. It's not a lottery for sure, but a mixed up on Apple part.

 

[Arran]

I didn't complaint for that, I complaint why some people with later delivery timeline got it earlier than me.

Tough. Report it to the principal's office then.

 

[SixtyK]

I am sure if Apple change the 05/08 delivery date to end of May or June, we complained, people like SixtyK will still say "Why are you complaining? It's just a watch".

It's funny that you mention that. Just yesterday in the 4-6weeks (Deliever May 13 - May 27th) pre-orders thread, SlyHackr posted that their delivery window had been pushed from 4/24-5/8 to 5/13-5/27. How did I respond?

If that is the case, I can certainly understand being upset. Hopefully they will be able to offer some sort of reasonable explanation at the very least. I know that doesn't offset the frustration over a change in shipping dates.

You don't have to agree with me. That's fine. Please don't put words into my mouth.

 

[zmunkz]

Yep, I did and haven't found anything credible. Just this morning someone posted a screenshot 'proving' theirs was an xx:08: order that has shipped, and they were using the time stamp that their email client showed instead of the one from apples servers in the header. Many people who are posting their times here are not using the correct time stamp to do so.

You might be over complicating that... mail clients show the time from the headers, that is how they know when it was sent. I checked my own apple order email, and the only dates in the headers are these:

Delivered-To: ******@gmail.com
Received: by 10.36.1.2 with SMTP id 2csp946835itk;
Fri, 10 Apr 2015 00:08:48 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.66.141.38 with SMTP id rl6mr258112pab.25.1428649727584;
Fri, 10 Apr 2015 00:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <noreply@orders.apple.com>
Received: from nwk-txn-msbadger0704.apple.com (nwk-txn-msbadger0704.apple.com. [17.151.1.83])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id ps10si1689119pbc.48.2015.04.10.00.08.46
for <******@gmail.com>
(version=TLSv1 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128/128);
Fri, 10 Apr 2015 00:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of noreply@orders.apple.com designates 17.151.1.83 as permitted sender) client-ip=17.151.1.83;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=pass (google.com: domain of noreply@orders.apple.com designates 17.151.1.83 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=noreply@orders.apple.com;
dkim=pass header.i=@orders.apple.com;
dmarc=pass (p=REJECT dis=NONE) header.from=orders.apple.com
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2015 07:08:46 +0000 (GMT)
From: Apple Store <your_order_US@orders.apple.com>
To: zmunkz@gmail.com
Message-ID: <47392992.17581391428649726149.JavaMail.email@email.apple.com>
Subject: Your order is being processed
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_Part_890246_576855496.1428649726148"
...

It is a difference of 2 seconds total... so if someone is showing an XX:08 that shipped, I don't think you can dismiss that.

 

[Gmouse]

So, is the date in the header we should look for, the one immediately above the Apple Title and with (GMT)? In that case my order (42mm SS SB w/SB Link Band) is 7:08:33 (GMT) and still "processing" and June...

 

[ilian92]

What I find incredible is how people get on each other's backs for completely different issues than the ones initially discussed in the thread.

End of the day, shipping windows aside, I find it ridiculous that any model ordered 3-4 minutes from the store's opening would not be delivered on launch day. After all, the whole point of online pre-orders is that you don't necessarily have to be there right on the second. We're talking about a product announced 6-7 months ago, not a football stadium with 60,000 seats where there's only so much you can offer.

If there are production issues, then the launch shouldn't happen yet. It's equally ridiculous that you might pre-order something 5 days into a two week window and only have a vague date over a month away.

Yes, they promise a window for delivery and I'm sure they'll keep it and even deliver in advance for most. It's just not right when someone orders 3 mins past and doesn't get whatever it is on launch day.