They should have named the watch the "iFlop" because I've yet to meet anyone who would ever possibly want that thing.
Nobody wants "smart watches". It's a product category nobody asked for and nobody is interested in.
That thing is gonna flop bad.
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There is no point.
It's a product category with no demand. Nobody asked for it. Nobody wants it. And it serves no useful purpose. It just gives tech-heads a reason to waste money on a gadget that doesn't do much of anything.
Flop? No, I don't think it's going to flop. Is it going to sell as much as the iPhone? NO. Only a small percentage of iPhone users will buy at least one smart watch. They are predicting that Apple will sell around 10 Million of these things in the first year, which isn't that bad considering. If they sell less than 1 million of them, that would be a flop, but 10+ Million units in the first year would be considered a success with this type of product.
Think of it this way, in the traditional watch world, the Swiss watch makers sold a total of 20+ Million watches over the last year. That's the total number of watches made in Switzerland. if Apple can sell 10 Million units, that's not bad for one company to sell.
Look at this way, how much money do they make on each watch and how much R&D have they spent + the amount for the mfg of the product?
Typically when a company is introducing a new product category, they have to see how well it's going to do and how much profit, the first couple of years are more of recouping the R&D expense and they need to sell X number to break even and then they can realize the actual profits.
For this type of product, if they can sell in the 10% of the iPhone sales is AppleWatch sales, that would be a successful product since they are currently selling about 150 to 200 Million iPhones a year and they are ramping up yearly production. No one is expecting smart watches to equal the number of smartphones being sold.
We won't know how much of a success this product has for at least 1 year or more. We also don't know how often the product will be updated and what the expected lifespan is of each model. In the iPhone world, each model has about 4 years of lifespan if you look at the number of OS updates it gets. Most people generally replace their iPhone every 2 to 3 years on average.
I think the Smartwatch category is definitely smaller than the smartphone market, but still is going to attract a certain number of users and that's still to be determined.
Professional athletes, and people that are really health conscious that want to keep track of their workouts, etc. are more likely going to buy into the Smartwatch category along with gadget freaks that just like using these types of gadgets.
I think once the product is on the market for a year, we'll know how much of a success it will be, and then we have to look at how the sales ramp up/down over the course of the next 10 years.
But to say it's a flop would be premature at this time.
This is an accessory type product rather than a major market type product.
If Apple sells 10 Million in the first year, that's $3.5 Billion in gross sales. Would you say that a company that has yearly sales of $3.5 Billion to be a successful company? Most would LOVE to have that much in sales, especially if they have about $700 Million in Net Profit.
Beats Electronics only had about $1.5 Billion in sales in 2013 and they opened their doors in 2006, so it was after 7 years of being in business that they reaches $1.5 Billion in sales. If Apple sells 10 Million AppleWatches in the first year and they do in excess of $3.5 Billion, then most people would see that as a successful product. Heck, Apple only sold about 6.1 Million of the first generation iPhone back in 2007 when it was first introduced.
Nobody is interested in buying an AppleWatch? I wouldn't make that statement, that's based on pure ignorance. I think you seem to be only listening to the Android fanboys.