“There have been several articles with conflicting headlines with almost all referring to the same resource data, a posting by Slice,” J. M. Manness writes for Seeking Alpha.
“Slice Intelligence estimates that 957,000 people in the U.S. pre-ordered an Apple Watch on Friday, the first day the watch was available for sale. According to ereceipt data from a panel of two million online shoppers, each Apple Watch buyer ordered an average of 1.3 watches… [emphasis added],” Manness writes. “That is to say, Slice estimates that some 1.24 million Apple Watches were preordered in the USA, during the first day.”
“I have written before how it is important to understand where data comes from and how it is gathered. Slice has a particularly solid and large database. It provides a service of tracking your sales receipts for you, keeping them saved and accessible. This means that the data it accesses is reliable for its customers,” Manness writes. “Slice also notes that the average purchase price was $503.83 per watch, which would have generated about $627 million… I think we can estimate between 2 and 2.5 million watches were likely sold worldwide for revenue of between $1 to $1.25 billion. Not a bad opening day.”
Read more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Excellent breakdown of Slice Intelligence’s data. Apple Watch preorders are even stronger than most media outlets are reporting!
Related articles:
Apple Watch first weekend preorders destroy Android Wear’s annual sales – April 13, 2015
Average U.S. Apple Watch pre-order was $707 – April 13, 2015
Apple Watch first-day pre-orders estimated near 1 million – April 13, 2015
Apple likely to quickly ramp up Apple Watch production – April 13, 2015
Apple Watch pre-order shipping estimates stretch into summer – April 11, 2015
Apple Watch sold out in minutes; didn’t preorder in time, how’s June sound? – April 10, 2015
Here are the dates you can expect to get your Apple Watch – April 10, 2015
Apple Watch on fire as Apple sells out fast – April 10, 2015
Apple Watch draws strong turnout at Apple Retail Stores – April 10, 2015
Apple Watch already sold out – April 10, 2015
Open thread: Did you get your Apple Watch preorder placed? – April 10, 2015
This only the same story all day long. How many ways can they slice it?
Here’s Philip Elmer De-Witt’s take on the same info: http://for.tn/1coFCmG
And 2.5 million in one day may seem like a lot… But that’s significantly LESS than 1% of the (current) potential Apple Watch customers who are already Apple’s iPhone (5 or later) customers. 2.5 million is just the first drop-in-the-bucket.
During the first year of Apple Watch, there will be four more quarters of iPhone sales. If we very conservatively estimate that at least 50 million new iPhone will be sold per quarter, that’s another 200 million or more potential Apple Watch customers before Apple Watch Year One is over. And during that time (unlike before), Apple Watch will be on sale, prominently displayed next to iPhones. Many of those customers will be NEW Apple customers, buying the phone and watch at the same time.
Most of the first year (and 2015) Apple Watch sales predictions from the “analysts” and “experts” are going to be blown away, because they think only in terms of Apple Watch numbers. If they instead think in terms of iPhone numbers, plus the predictable behavior of enthusiastic Apple customers, the TRUTH becomes clear… 🙂
I suspect we will also see gradually accelerating demand as Apple Watch starts appearing on people’s wrists. I suspect it is one of those devices that an actual sight of will instigate drooling over (figuratively speaking).
In fact, the Watch’s physical visibility might accelerate demand for the iPhone.
I would not be surprised if some of the drooling over the Apple Watch is real. Fortunately, the device has a respectable water resistance rating.
I would like to have one of these watches, but are they going to be subject to snatch and grab? I work around the docks. They are well lighted but you always have your sketchy characters drifting about.
Keep your gold one at home and wear the Sport to work, that’ll fool the bad guys. Do you carry a wallet?
I guess Slice has a good record if all the news about 957,000 customers buying average of 1.3 Apple watches is based on them extrapolating that number from 9,080 of their 2 million person panel (<0.5%) buying the Apple Watch.
Not sure how Slice keeps track of Apple direct sales…
They track all registered owners of their app by monitoring all email receipts. I use Slice all the time and can see my order receipt from Apple in their app. I highly recommend their app by the way. It’s free and works seamlessly.💥👌😀
Is it Slice-the package tracker for Amazon? It states that it automatically scans Gmail and Yahoo for receipts, does it share this information? Not sure I trust an Amazon app. 🖖😀⌚️
how about the people that ordered the watch and dont use the slice app? We dont get counted i guess. So the data is missing large chunks. Why even put it out, or why the media use it as important?
Exactly.
Do you disregard any poll that didn’t personally include you? Statistics is all about calculating the missing large chunks. It has to be done well, though. This one one is flawed for other reasons.
That’s not data!!! The data were that 97k were ordered. The ESTIMATE extrapolated by those 97k is that 1.24 miion were ordered. Dear lord people!
That’s how statistics works. If the sample is good the result is very accurate.
The “Sample” is the name for the group of participants. A “good” sample means one with minimal biases.
The actual problem here is that the sample is not good. They are self-selected and are motivated and active online shoppers. Those numbers are not likely representative of the population as a whole.
However, the watch is a personal item, meant to worn and seen. Most people will not buy one sight unseen. They will want to try it on, see it on a friend, and compare the wide range of options.
Sales will ramp up, accelerating over time.
Correct, much bias in this sample. And I see since writing my post they’ve changed the headline. Thanks MDN 🙂
I get frustrated when headlines claim conjecture is fact.
So Apple made as much in one day of watch sales as all Swiss watch makers make in about 22 days. Mature market vs launch day of course. Will be interesting to see what it sells in first full year. I’d be surprised if it’s below 20 million.