“Preorders kicked off last Friday for the new Apple Watch, and analysts across Wall Street are trying to estimate what the sales figures will look like,” Julie Verhage reports for Bloomberg.
“In an attempt to get further insight, Goldman Sachs conducted a survey of over 1,000 nationally representative U.S. consumers over the weekend, asking participants about their intentions to buy a smart watch this year,” Verhage reports. “Here’s what Goldman analyst Lindsay Drucker Mann and her team found.”
Survey is positive for Apple, negative for traditional watch brands. We surveyed a group of over 1,000 nationally representative consumers on 4/11, the day after the preorder window for Apple Watches opened. Our key insights include: (1) encouraging initial demand, with +11% of iPhone users “very likely” to purchase an Apple Watch this year, (2) regular watch wearers are among the most likely to order an Apple or other smart watch, suggesting high displacement rates for traditional watches from smart watch adoption, (3) young consumers are substantially more likely to buy an Apple Watch than older consumers, and (4) those likely to buy a smart watch most often indicate Fossil, Seiko, Casio, Rolex, Timex, and TAG Heuer are the watch brands they wear today. — Goldman Sachs
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The general public doesn’t get it, yet. It’s too early. Let the early adopters do what they do so well.
[This survey is] before Apple Watch lands on the wrists of friends and coworkers. That percentage will rise dramatically after Apple Watch launches. 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.
Just like the tens of millions who said they didn’t want or need an iPhone, who are now on their fifth iPhone, so it’ll go with Apple Watch.
And as we wrote on March 3rd:
As people see others using Apple Pay via their Apple Watches, the device will sell itself.
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