Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty today writes in a note to clients that a new survey shows a rising interest among a broader set of U.S. iPhone users.
“A survey her firm conducted last month showed a marked increase in the stated intent to buy Apple Watch, versus a December poll,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s. “‘Looking just at the compatible iPhone base, Apple Watch unit demand increased 60% compared to our last survey. We extrapolate Watch demand using only survey responses from iPhone users since the Watch is only compatible with iPhone 5 or newer. This analysis indicates 15M Watch demand, over 60% higher than 9M three months ago,’ [Huberty writes].”
“In fact, although no one will get their hands on the thing until April 24th,” Ray reports, “Apple has now become the leading wearables brand as measured by purchasing intent, she writes.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not that eclipsing the raft of stupidwatches on the market was difficult, but there you have it. On April 24th, as the Fedex trucks start arriving, you can drop the “as measured by purchasing intent” qualification as all others will be instantly categorized as “Apple Watch roadkill,” “Apple Watch also-rans,” and/or “Apple Watch wannabes” ahead of, naturally, the “Apple Watch knockoffs” that will begin to scatter onto the market like the cockroaches they are.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” for the heads up.]
Fire up the “Buy One get Four Free” ads for the existing smartwatches. Here comes the Apple Watch tank.
how about “buy one, get unlimited supply (bogus) free?!
Well, that escalated quickly. 😉
…and the surprise is…?
It will be interesting to find out if AppleWatch will entice users of older iPhones to upgrade to newer iPhones for AppleWatch compatibility. There are a lot of possibilities for Apple to increase sales which it seems analysts don’t quite understand. I know almost nothing about Android Wear devices but I do know they require Android 4.3 or 4.4 to work and it’s said that only one-fourth of all Android smartphones are running those OSes. Again, all those various Android Wear smartwatches on the market seem rather fragmented with an awful lot of competition vying for market share. Apple has no competition because there is only AppleWatch for iOS.
I wouldn’t think a lot of consumers would be using Android Wear devices with iPhones even if Google does provide some iPhone compatibility. Apple can always break that compatibility if they want so that could be a big concern for Google and users.
I don’t know why Wall Street is so doubtful about AppleWatch’s chances for success. Consumers are just too unpredictable to draw the correct conclusions. Apple or another company could develop some killer app that would leave consumers begging for AppleWatches. It’s really hard to tell the future. Apple just needs to look at one financial quarter at a time. Sales will either come or they won’t. Either way, it doesn’t appear as if Apple’s share price will move considerably in either direction.
In one week ! 😄
As a side note, we should remember that the FIRST Apple “wearable device” was the iPod shuffle (2nd gen)… 🙂
So Apple has been in the lead since Feb 2006.
Do you remember the Apple portable, what was it, from the early 90’s? I think it was 20 some pounds.
Certainly not “wearable,” unless it was strapped to your back. 🙂
Apple contracted Sony to miniturize that design to produce the PowerBook 100, which was my personal favorite of the first three PowerBook models
This is great. Now I can get a smart watch for cheaper. Yay.
At least 30 million sold or on waiting list by the of the June quarter THIS YEAR. That means 10% of the active user base of iPhone (5 or later) customers decided to be Apple Watch “early adopters.” And I’m “only” using 300 million as the number of potential customers. After iPhone sales for the March quarter are announced, it will be even higher. And iPhone sales for the June quarter makes it higher still…
But in any case, isn’t it believable that at least 1-in-10 of Apple’s friendly, highly satisfied, and enthusiastic EXISTING iPhone customers will buy an Apple Watch immediately (or soon) after its release?
Apple is leading the smart phone market! Duh.
I’d bet there are already more people _wearing_ the Apple Watch than Android Wear.