“BMO Capital Markets’s Keith Bachman reiterates an Outperform rating on shares of Apple, and a $135 price target, writing that his survey of consumers caused him to ratchet back expectations for the watch,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s. “Bachman’s note follows largely positive reviews for the Watch in major publications on Wednesday morning.”
“BMO’s survey of 735 consumers through April 8th, a period in which Apple has been showing ads on TV, showed only 9% of people with an iPhone intend to buy the Apple Watch,” Ray reports, “while only 1% of people who don’t own an iPhone intend to buy on.”
“[Bachman wrote], ‘Given our survey results, we are lowering our Apple Watch estimate to 39 million units over the forecast period, or ~9% of our estimated iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 installed base. Consistent with our past comments, we believe that as applications for the Watch increase, we think that interest will likewise increase over time,'” Ray reports, Bachman notes 60% of those who intend to buy the device intend to buy one intend to buy the less-expensive $349 ‘Sport’ model, the rest will buy the steel versions, and one respondent said they intended to buy the ‘Edition’ model for $10,000 or more.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: That 9% is before Apple Watch lands on the wrists of friends and coworkers. That percentage will rise dramatically after Apple Watch launches.
Oh, by the way: In a survey of 3,489 people conducted in April 2007, two months before Apple launched something called the “iPhone,” ChangeWave found that 9% said they were likely to buy an iPhone once it became available.
Extrapolate.
Analysts who ignore history and misread data are poor predictors of future events.
1 in 10 sounds pretty good to me especially as most people will want to see it in action before working out if they think it will be of use to them or need one in their life. Nearly everyone can see why they needed a phone but with the watch its going to be a little more nuanced and will ramp up if the early adopters really show how useful it can be.
Exactly. Unlike the iPod & iPhone, it will take time for people to understand and appreciate the value of the Apple watch. There are also likely to be first gen product issues that could dampen adoption rate.
It took a while for people to “get” the iPhone and iPod too…first-year sales for both of those products were paltry by today’s standards.
Only 9%?! Or 39,000,000 watches expected to be sold!!! Only?! Give me a break! If Apple does that’s many times greater than the total of ALL SmartWatches sold to date! Somehow I think whatever quantity of watches sold will be a disappointment to the anal-ists! 😀🖖
Anal-ysts don’t factor in the ‘Apple Drop’ effect wrung into the system by Steve Jobs.
Hint, Hint, preview, hint, hint over 6 months results in an incredible amount of articles, word of mouth, understanding, and conviction to buy, in addition to its compatibility with other Apple products.
This all occurs before the final product is even available for a customer to touch it.
Apple gets an incredible amount of free advertising this way.
Does anyone know why the heart is disabled in the Apple Store app for any stainless steel watch with a leather fold-over band? For me, it’s not possible to add that combination to my favorites.
You need to pick the band size before you hit the heart.
Wow. I feel like an idiot now. Thank you.
You’re not an idiot. Remember when using Apple interfaces used to be intuitive?
If I recall the iPhone wasn’t hugely popular at the start, it only really began to sky rocket with the 3G. It’s a different market, but it doesn’t surprise me that many people want to take a wait and see approach.
The reviews have been good, but they’ve not been outstanding, there are certainly enough reasons to see what comes with software updates, and potentially even what the next version is like.
Various sites I’ve seen mention the lag between turning your wrist and the screen coming on to tell the time. I regularly check my watch, and sometimes I don’t move my wrist at all because I’m at a table and my arm is already visible. As a watch that is a negative. I have no doubt that the Apple watch will be a success, but I’m also sure that it’s not perfect, and there are enough things that can and will be improved (probably quite quickly) to justify not rushing in.
I can’t see their being the huge demand like there is for a new iPhone, it will almost certainly increase as people use them and as apps are launched and improved, but it’s a fair chunk of change to spend on something that is lacking in certain areas (albeit still way better than alternatives.)
Incorrect. I bought an original iPhone a month after it was introduced, and the Apple Store I bought it at was packed with people wanting one. The difference was you had to pay much more for the iPhone because AT&T wasn’t subsidizing it (and Apple was getting a cut of the monthly service fee), so it was out of reach of many more people. Plus Apple didn’t produce as many.
I didn’t mean it didn’t sell a decent number, but it hardly set the world alight. If I remember, reception was not brilliant. The 3G really set it off on the path to the massive sales we see now. I’m not saying the original iPhone wasn’t great, it clearly was, but I’m glad I waited for the 3G. Similarly, look at how long the iPad 2 remained available (even once newer models came out) once they improved it over the first gen model.
I wish the author would have reviewed the accuracy of Bachman’s predictions regarding Apple and AAPL over the years so we would have some context within which to put his current remarks.
Just remember “BMO” stands for “Bowel Movements Only”.
It’s so easy to get people to dump their Apple stock. Has there ever been an Apple product that was approached with optimism by Wall Street.
There’s been an unjustified, consistent product introduction pessimism by the buffoons only to be equally consistently met with a resounding success reality. You’d think they’d learn by now. Some people never seem to understand the history or company they’re dealing with here. It’s all a fetid shadenfreude wish on their part that’s never realized more than anything else.
I think a lot of Wall Street analysts are still stuck in the ’90s, thinking Apple will go out of business at any moment, and that the last 15 years have just been a temporary fluke.
Yes as has been pointed out before a stopped watch is right twice a day and they’re hoping one of these doomsaying days they’ll be right but hasn’t happened yet and not likely to in their lifetime. Sad isn’t it to constantly (and seemingly willingly) be made a repetitious fool of by Apple?
What this means is that “only” 9% of the total potential market are early adopters. To anyone who knows ANYTHING about business this is not news. Such people also know that after the early adopters comes a massive number of more careful buyers.
Did anyone read the Drudge-linked hit piece on the AppleWatch? They pulled out every negative line out of otherwise positive reviews to make it seem like the product was going to be dead on arrival. Horrible journalism.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/08/us-apple-watch-reviews-idUSKBN0MZ1FU20150408
Apple will sell every watch they can possibly make in 2015. Every. Single. One.
The only limit on how many Apple sells is its own manufacturing capacity.
BTW, selling 39 million unites in the first year of availability would be astonishing for any other company to achieve. What other consumer electronics product sells in numbers like that? Nothing but iPhone/iPad. Yet Wall Street would consider that a “failure” for Apple.
Good, I’m glad. There won’t be enough to go around anyways…let the early adopters have them first!