“Apple Inc. is putting a limit on how much information it will share about the performance of Apple Watch,” Adam Satariano reports for Bloomberg.
“The Cupertino, California-based company said yesterday that starting in fiscal 2015, it will lump Apple Watch with the iPod, Apple TV, Beats headphones and speakers, and other accessories into a new ‘other products’ category in its quarterly financial statements,” Satariano reports. “iPhone, iPad and Mac sales will continue to be broken out separately, along with revenue from services like the App Store, iTunes and Apple Pay, the mobile payments system that rolled out yesterday.”
“Cook said the disclosure policy doesn’t reflect the company’s expectations and that it was partly a way to restrict what competitors can see about how the gadget is selling. The company could decide to share more details later, he added,” Satariano reports. “‘I’m not very anxious in reporting a lot of numbers on Apple Watch and giving a lot of details on it because our competitors are looking for it,’ Cook said on a conference call yesterday.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
MacDailyNews presents live notes from Apple’s Q414 Conference Call – October 20, 2014
It’s zero right now. SEC does not require disclosure until it becomes material, so why would Apple break it out before it has to? It’s not hiding, it’s following the regulations the way they should be expected to.
SEC does not require product sales disclosure of any kind at any time.
That is itemized sales/unit figures.
Here are the rules: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/begfinstmtguide.htm
Apple will not hide much since we known what sales those categories how now (and will have in the calendar Q4) without Watches. It will be easy to approximate sales in both money and quantity (though the latter will be less accurate).
Unless there is a big update to AppleTV or any successor device which could cloud the numbers somewhat.
” It will be easy to approximate sales in both money and quantity…”
Tell that to analysts.
Apple, as do most companies, doesn’t post or REPORT* current product specific sales figures of any value to the public, and in particular for the competition to salivate on.
Some companies disclose their sales simply for promotional purposes. And as evidence, listing shipments is a far cry from actual sales. Unless of course, they are all sold out.
*There is no law that they have to.
Other companies routinely hide their sales of even their smart watches, reporting shipments instead to mask their actual sales, so Apple grouping their sales of a new device similarly is probably a good call. I do hope they sell well, however. I know I’m looking forward to mine.
We finally know why Apple bought Beats: just to hide Apple Watch sales figures.
Why do they call the iPhone a gadget? It’s a computer.