“The Apple Watch has only been on sale for a couple of months but that hasn’t stopped the web rumour mongers from speculating about what’s in store for the next-generation of Cupertino’s smartwatch,” Paul Lamkin reports for Forbes.
“The latest reports, courtesy of 9to5Mac, suggest that Apple has a few major tweaks up its sleeve for the Apple Watch 2 – most notably a FaceTime camera and tether-less functionality,” Lamkin reports. “The former would see a HD camera added to the bezel on the front of the watch, allowing Watch wearers to video conference with one another. It’d be like the Jetsons came true.”
“The Apple Watch 2 rumours arrive as it’s reported that Apple has shifted almost 3 million units of the original smartwatch since its April launch,” Lamkin reports. “Slice Intelligence claims that Apple has sold 2.79 million Watches as of mid-June. Its estimate is a result of email mining from a panel of 2 million people who are representative of online shoppers in the US.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re not sold on the accuracy of Slice’s Apple Watch unit sales estimates.
SEE ALSO:
Apple Watch 2 to feature FaceTime camera, iPhone-free Wi-Fi, premium-priced $1000+ models, sources say – June 18, 2015
It’s 2.79 million until Apple reports a crazier figure like 5.2 million.
I believe that’s only USA Sales
Apple will not report any Apple Watch figures this year.
However, we could guess level of sales by comparing “Other products” category in Apple quarterly reports from after AW release versus after AW release.
They might inSeptember if they are large enough to deserve bragging rights before Christmas. It’s gonna be an WATCH Christmas 2015!💥⌚️😱😜🎉🚀🎈❤️
Yeah, you’re actually going to NEED facetime on your watch, because Apple Watch 2 is coming and you’ll want to look like douchebag 2.0.
Who needs pinpoint, sattelite based GPS, when you can have “triangulating cell towers”… sounds like a position in a skin flick.
Who needs a steak at a nice restaurant, when you can stand in line at a soup kitchen.
Great Job, Tim, keep up the good work.
😊
We get it. You’re a carnivore.😍
More like a carrion eater.
Your thoughts are so interesting! Any chance we can meet in person so I can learn more about your philosophies?
@bathroomwithouthair
I’ll pass, you’ll have to find yourself another date!
Wow, is every Apple fanboy gay?
But I want you. I want you bad.
Tens of millions of happy customers — orandy.
Tens of millions of happy customers — orandy.
Who to listen to!!!!!?
Again with the existential crisis!!!!!!!
@Sean
3-million does not tens of million make!
And trust me, that’s the ONLY 3!
And probably half of those will be returns.
I belive Samsung owns the King of Returns title for “smart” watches and I use that term lightly.
I bet you look macho with your Samsung Douche watch.
I don’t believe these rumors about an Apple Watch 2. I’ll believe it when I see it. Pisses me off when stuff like this gets posted right after we received the 1st gen watches.
Well don’t forget that even if (and I expect WHEN) Apple releases a new watch, it’ll be a year or so after the first one came out. That’s a long long time, and I intend to enjoy my first gen watch during all of it!
I hear you John. I am enjoying mine quite a bit. It’s really grown on me.
Even moreso when we get watchOS 2 this Fall.💥⌚️😍
Why? We all knew it was coming….,soon! It’s 1st gen. I bought the cheapest one this time, but am all geared up for the Black SS model with the Black SS band next time. BTW I’m loving this iteration, it surpasses my wildest expectations, and with the coming updates this fall, I may not even need to upgrade the hardware, but I’m ready to do so if need be.
Putting a FaceTime camera on Apple Watch is a dumb move. Apple won’t do it. To do a FaceTime chat, you pull out your iPhone, just as you pull out the iPhone to take photos or record videos.
Battery issues aside, if you can put a FaceTime camera on the rounded bezel closest to the body (my brother is a leftie and he’s not always happy with Apple’s apparent right-handedness so I’m wording this carefully!!) it could be more natural to FaceTime via the watch. They’ll have some interesting mathematics to apply to the frame based on watch orientation, no doubt about it!
Rats! Just after posting that I figured it out: The entire watch face is a video sensor and they’re doing facial recognition to “locate” you and send that over the chat! Brilliant! “Hey, mate, I can’t see you very well. Could you polish your watch face, please?”
when next gen comes out, this will become my workout only watch (or maybe go to a relative)…its the cycle of life for my apple products!
I was having the same thought. Maybe as a sleep tracker, too. Unlike with the iPhone, there’s less confinement to owning only one watch.
My wife can’t wear non-stainless steel watches so she gets mine and I’ll get generation 2. We do the same with the phones, either she gets my iPhone or one of the kids.
Oh, and Forbes doesn’t wrote news, the just pass on rumors. Malcolm would roll in his grave if he knew how bad Forbes has become.
I want Apple to be successful. But as I’ve stated the Watch in my opinion is a flawed device for many reasons. I don’t see smartwatches ever taking off.
When it comes to slaes of Apple Watches it should be clear now. There has been no press release from Apple bragging about the sales of the Apple Watch like they have done many times with other products after opening weekend. Apple may have had yield issues with the Watch and now is in full swing. But the bottom line now is… If they don’t press release something on the watch regarding sales within the next month you have your answer: sales are nothing to brag about or even report.
And if they don’t release sales numbers on it in their next quarterly it should finally put the nail in the coffin on this thing.
Apple Watch 2 may be more successful but how much is unclear. I juat don’t see the masses wearing geeky watches. Smartwatches are to today what Casio calculator watches were to the 1980s.
This is like the Segway. Jobs was even going to invest some $60 million into it and the comapny had the highest valuation of any startup ever at the time money was being shopped for. Even Jeff Bezos was at the table to invest along with Kleiner Perkins. This was all of course hush hush and before there was a product, just a prototype.
They all thought that billions of people would buy them and transportation would be changed forever. Even Jobs and Bezos were somewhat of that thinking. This was around the year 2001 when all these guys were at the table.
But Jobs said something as time went on while the Segway was being developed and before he put any money in. And that was this, “Do you really think average people are going to ride these to the store?” His intuition proved right.
And boy was he right. Segways are geeky and unhealthy. This deterred people from buying them. They found through market research that this was the case. Too geeky. Unnecessary. And unhealthy.
I look at the smartwatch as the same in the sense that it’s too geeky and unnecessary. I predict the Apple Watch will be like the Segway and end up in niche markets, which isn’t what Apple will support because rhey need volume and turnover and they need consumers for that.
I want it to be successful as well. There are flaws, like many third-party apps crashing, not loading or slow, but that will change with time. This is a new paradigm, and like the iPhone and iPad proved, this device will evolve for the better. For us early adopters, we have to expect this sort of thing – as well as this sort of rhetoric.
3rd party apps crashing is not a flaw of the watch, it’s a flaw of the app. There are plenty that work perfectly. As devs update their apps, you will see less crashes. When Apple’s apps start crashing, then you can blame Apple. If there is an app crashing, people need to go into the app store and let the dev know in a review so that they can push an update to fix the problem. This is true for any device, not just the watch.
ReemH:
You’re correct somewhat about crashing Apps. The flaws in the Watch have nothing to do with that as I see it. The flaws are:
-Requires iPhone to function for most things;
(somewhat fatal)
-Difficult to see screen in sunlight (non-fatal);
-Doesn’t do much of anything better than a smartphone (FATAL);
-Screen too small for practical use (FATAL); and
-Device strapped to wrist awkward to use (FATAL).
Let’s look at the three fatal flaws above. The screen is so small that it limits too much what you can do on it. No keyboard or any real browser. This means it’s difficult to communicate back with people (speech to text is no answer because of dynamic environments). And Apps are stripped of so much functionality as to be useless. Also fingers too big for touch screen and crown is awkward. And older people have trouble reading such a small screen. The screen is just far too small.
The other fatal flaw is that it’s worn on a wrist. Can you use the Apple Watch with one hand or no hands? Not really. You actually need 2 ARMS to use it in many use cases. Think about that. Typical use case: slide up sleeve with one hand to reveal watch on other arm. Abduct entire arm and bend elbow to bring device closer to your face because the screen is so small. Use your other hand to interact with the device. This is WORSE than a smartphone in terms of portable interaction in many use cases.
It’s fundamemtally flawed and there’s no fixing it. It is not really better at anything compared to a smartphone. It has no reason to exist other than niche markets. The tech industry and Apple have tried to make watches into computers and it hasn’t worked and it’s not going to work.
It’s time to move on and make Siri much better for hands free computing and evolve iOS on the smartphone.
@Dftr
How many times have I said exactly the same thing. Unfortunately, no one ever listens to anything I post. Whenever you are posting things that are contrary to the popular opinion on a website forum that’s biased to a particular manufacturer then you become public enemy number one.
The Apple Watch is not only the worst product from Apple, it’s probably the worst product I’ve seen in the last 40-years.
It’s really that bad, and most of this is compounded by the fact that the margins are astronomical for Apple yet the quality and the inherent functionality of the device is virtually nonexistent.
Your arguments are valid if we were not talking about a watch. The problem is that people are looking at this thing through the wrong pair of glasses. People’s expectations are that this thing will do smart functionality better than a phone, an iPad, or a computer. That’s not what it was designed to do. Apple finally got it right with smart watches. Android tried to make a smart device that you can use as a watch by strapping these huge computers to your wrist. Apple tried to make a watch with smart device functionality. That is why you have a $10,000 plus version of this thing. It’s not the smart device functionality that increases the price, it’s the watch that increases the price. It’s jewelry first, and a smart device second. It’s smart device functionality is not meant to be better than your smartphone or other smart devices, it’s meant to offer you convenience in those moments where it would take a little extra time to pull out your phone. For the moments where convenience matters, you will find that it actually works better than the phone, such as Apple Pay. Things such as listening and controlling your music while you are working out is where it makes its money…. convenience. Quickly responding to a text with Siri or quick responses (BTW, if you hold your hand over the watch while you speak into it, it only picks up your voice and blocks all of the ambient noise and it does it extremely accurately)….convenience. Quickly answering a phone call until you can get to your phone……convenience. Quickly checking up on your security cameras without pulling out or going to get your phone….convenience. You do not have to find a use case for this thing. There is none if you can do it with another device. You just have to enjoy your lovely piece of jewelry and be happy that it offers a convenient functionally that your other jewelry doesn’t. Out of all the functionality that I tell people about when it comes to my Apple Watch, the best compliments I get are that it is a fine looking watch. That is exactly the type of compliment that you want from jewelry. I am a watch collector and the price ranges are the same as any of the watches that I have been interested in, it just does more.
ReemH:
No question there are some applications for a smartwatch, like when exercising, the problem is that it’s not enough, and especially when you need a phone for the thing to really do much of anything.
Regardless, I think you’re missing the point. When we go back to 2010 with the iPad Keynote, we learned a lot about how Jobs thinks. He brought up slides that showed why the iPad had a reason to live. He made it clear that if the tablet didn’t do enough better than a smartphone it had no reason to live. What do we see now? iPad sales have tanked since the large screen iPhones have hit. The tablet just doesn’t do enough better than a jumbo smartphone and therefore has no reason to live in a person’s life.
Jobs understood this. Pioneered this thinking. We’re geeks, and we like tech stuff way more than average mere mortals. Jobs looked at things from a practical perspective. People aren’t going to dump money into tech they don’t need nor understand. And that’s no way to build a business and changed the world.
The Apple Watch may be viewed as a luxury item. But that has no place in Apple’s vision and product matrix. If the company is changing their vision that’s cool, but I’m willing to bet the farm that if the Apple Watch is an indication of such change, Apple is on a slow boat to China.
I ask lots of people around me if they want the Apple Watch and the answer is no every time. Everyone I’ve asked could care less about it. And I don’t see my friend’s wives or anyone including my engineers wearing and using them. The watch is not a computing device because of its inherent flaws and competition from smartphones.
I predict that the smartphone will be reslient just like the desktop and laptop. It will never be unseated by a smartwatch and most people will not buy smartwatches. Those are my predictions.
IPad sales are relative. They have tanked in comparison to the iPhone, but in comparison to other tablets, they have completely dominated the market. The reason iPad sales are down is not because it is a bad device, it’s because people hold on to them longer just like computers. For the customer, there is a longer upgrade cycle. I have the 2011 iPad air and the iMac that came out before that. We are geeks so we tend to upgrade more often. I have owned every iPad in existence and every iPhone since the iPhone 4S, but I am not the average customer. Most people upgrade their iPhones every 2 years but they hold on to their iPad far longer. I also find that there is a huge amount of interest in the Apple Watch and have seen plenty in the wild. My friends want the Apple Watch but do not want to wait Months to get it. Now that it is in stores, I expect to see alot more. However. I do believe that the average customer will also hold onto the watch for a longer period of time before upgrading. As for me, I will probably own every Apple Watch made because I can and I am heavily invested in company in both their products and their stock. I like your thought process though, but I respectfully disagree.
I meant the 2011 MacBook Air
ReemH:
Go look at iPad quarterly sales for the past 8 quarters. It’s undeniable the significant drop after iPhone 6. You also must factor in Apple selling in new and more countries. Even with this, iPad sales are down year over year 25%. Also look at Internet use data of the iPad and tablets.
Sales of the iPad have tumbled not primarily because people are hangining on to them longer. It’s that people aren’t using them as much anymore because they’re unnecessary as they have powerful larger screened smartphones.
Your premises are all incorrect. You obviously don’t own one or you would know that.😖
FutureMedia:
Your post says nothing. Contributes nothing.
Your premises are all incorrect.
No they are not.
Your conclusions are all incorrect.
1. Requires an iPhone to function…
That is a plus not a fail. No additional cell expense. Has access to the resources of the always nearby iPhone. His is that a negative?
2. Difficult to see screen in sunlight. Not! I have brightness on minimum and text on smallest. Reading the screen in direct sunlight couldn’t be easier. You have no clue because you don’t wear one. Probably have never even seen one in direct sunlight.
3. Doesn’t do anything better than a smartphone. Wrong:
Shows time with sweep second hand
Superior & handy Alarm & Timer with both tone and haptic Alerts
Timer with countdown displayed in seconds
Both displayed in clock instant view complications
What’s playing from my third party music player including controls and album cover art views
What’s the temperature outside?
What’s today’s date?
What’s the current price of AAPL?
Current headlines in a flash
Haptic reminders to stand and drink water
Easy exercise Starts, pauses & ends
VIP Mail arrivals
iMessages with seven instant prewritten replies – you compose
What’s my heart rate?
Tasks plan
TOBY virtual pet dog
Activity monitor
Manage DJ duties
tv remote
Remaining battery power percentage
All better and handier than anyone’s iPhone
1. A watch is attached to your body and supposed to be mobile. Use case issues: you’re on a beach and swimming; you’re outside the house and outside bluetooth range; you’re on a run; your iPhone battery is dead or powered off; you have Bluetooth connection drops; you need TWO devices that need to be charged each night where one is less functional than the other: redundant; you have to have an iPhone thereby constraining potential customer market size, etc., etc.
2. I have an Apple Watch you dickhead. Yes it is difficult to see in direct sunlight. Even your friends at MDN say the same thing as do others online. I’m in a tropical climate right now and the sun washes out the screen.
3. LOL. Nothing you’ve said is better on an Apple Watch compared to a smartphone. I mean you take yourself seriously? For example an Apple TV remote… On a tiny screen. I’ve been using the Watch since it came out and the many things you’ve listed and others… the only thing this $500 doorstop does better is SOME notifications some of the time with taptic feedback. I just asked Siri what the temperature outside is and went for my iPhone because the Watch has such a tiny screen I got sick of meddling with the interface to check more detailed weather info. And times that by pretty much every other use case.
It’s going on craigslist next week when I have time to list it. I’ve just been using it to tell the time and walked away from it where I go directly to my smartphone.
Why are you calling me a dickhead because I don’t see the uselessness of my WATCH SPORT the way you do? I use both the Alarm and the Timer many times each day. Don’t need iPhone for that. I can listen to 2GB of stored music – 320 six minute songs – with my Bluetooth headphones. Don’t need iPhone for that. I always have my iPhone 6 Plus in my left breast pocket where ever I go. I found a tailor who modified all my dual breasted pocket shirts’ left pockets for $5 each – extended the button down flap 1.5 inches taller.
WATCH charges very fast and it’s not a chore to do that because I just leave the charger puck on my bed where I just attach it next to me whenever I nap. Usually charging from above 50% back to 100% in only an hour or so. No big whoop.
I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty selling your WATCH for what you paid for it in a flash as long as it’s like new and you bought transferable Applecare Plus. Without AppleCare Plus battery replacement will cost $299.💥😱
Whoops! There you go, FM – confusing them with facts.
I know. I’m such a dickhead😜
Correction FutureMedia. You’re not a dickhead you’re a geek.
Thank you for the complement.😝
You are of course givin us a load of fertilizer. Apple NEVER give out sales figures outside of quarterly reports!
Groucho:
Go to their press release section and look back over the years you idiot. Yes they absolutley DO give out sales numbers and sometimes barely 1 week after a first weekend sales stream for a new product. That is, if sales are good…
Just because they aren’t giving out sales numbers doesn’t mean sales are bad. It only means they don’t want potential competitors to know what the sales numbers are – yet.
FutureMedia:
No. Wrong. When sales are good they press release it. They brag. Their Press Release section shows this. It is therefore not the case that they don’t want their competitors to know.
Just because you can cite historical evidence to the contrary regarding other product lines doesn’t mean sales are weak now and doesn’t mean they haven’t changed their announcement strategy for this entirely new product category.😱
I say keep the potential (probably never) competition guessing for as log as it takes for Apple to OWN this market.😜
There is more evidence and a lot of it that if sales were good they’d press release it and brag about it. There’s a strong prima pacie case as such. Thus, sales aren’t good when it comes to the Apple Watch.
Says you with ZERO evidence vs Slice receipt reports.
Evidence: Apple press releases sales numbers when they’re good on a new product shortly after launch. They didn’t with the iPad Mini 1 and sales weren’t great.
Slice is not evidence. It’s hearsay and inadmissible.
You see it’s like this, I didn’t by the AW because I thought it was gonna be a run-a-way Sales hit! I bought it because after research I knew it provided what I had been looking for, for quite some time, and even though the Pebble sorta spoke to some of that, it didn’t do most of what I wanted sufficiently enough for even a small cash outlay, and it was ugly & cheap looking. I am a watch aficionado and have worn quality watches since college and wanted more functionality, and at the same time, a nice timepiece. Apple provided both. If it is a run-a-way sales success, Great! but it serves my needs perfectly, and that too is Great! So I’m in a win, win position.
there is no doubt Apple Watch v1.0 is a bit geeky. Future models will no doubt be sleeker. Look at the first gen iPod. Nevertheless, it really is useful and I have been converted. My wife is not as convinced (and the clunky factor bothers her more)
What is the “clunky factor”? It couldn’t look more elegant than it does.😨 what could look classier with her black evening gown than a 38mm silver WATCH SPORT with a Milanese Loop band?😘
“I want Apple to be successful.”
Suuuuure you do.
“I don’t see smartwatches ever taking off.”
Uncle Fester, meet Dftr. He and you should talk about how the iPhone and Apple watch are overpriced toys and will never go anywhere.
I think Segways failed because they were too expensive to even try out. I always wanted one, but $6,000 was a bridge too high for me.
I always wanted a Segway, but $6,000 was a bridge too high for me. I suspect it failed for two reasons, price and local regulations passed that prevented their use in public areas.
The Segway was 6 grand without a place to ride it unless you are Mall Cop. A sub $500 Apple Watch will eventually take off, especially at Christmas. The perfect very nice gift without having to deal with a carrier contract.
Did you really need an iPhone back at version 1?
Only focusing on it as a reader only, it keeps your iPhone in your pocket 50% more. It filters your life much easier, as most of us sort thru daily what we want and don’t want to respond to. We don’t know we really need it yet, but soon.
iStepchild:
Yes I did need iPhone 1. It gave me Email, the FULL Web, and music to go all in one. It changed my life in that I could travel and be more mobile and still run my business. Nothing out there came close. iPhone 1 solved real problems. The Watch doesn’t other than for a few notification use cases.
I guess I simply disagree with your posted attributes about why the watch fails. I am curious, too, why you quote Steve Jobs “intuition” on the Segway but then don’t seem inclined to attribute the watch to Steve’s intuition?
Most of your concern seems to be that the watch solves no immediate need to be successful, that apps aren’t present or crash, it’s unwieldily, etc.
Curiously, Apple was founded and succeeded on those very attributes. The Apple I sold for inflation-adjusted US$2,763.00. And according to the Wikipedia article on Apple, revenues doubled every four months for the first five years!
The iPod started life as a 5GB music player for Macintosh at $499. It solved a need for a few million Mac users. Apple developed it further and altered the world forever.
But the watch will fail, eh?
He did not state a sales number, just the number of Apple Watches that have been shifted. I thought they were automatic, but I guess some must be manuals.
Lots of kewl new Watch 2 features!
Lots of new battery challenges!
So, um, uh…