“‘We made a decision back to September not to disclose the shipments of the watch,’ Mr Cook told investors on Tuesday. ‘That was not a matter of not being transparent. It was a matter of not giving our competition insight on a product we’ve worked hard on,'” Dave Lee reports for The BBC. “Many aren’t buying that explanation. But let’s look at what Apple did tell us.”
“Apple has lumped the watch in its ‘other’ category that includes the iPod, Beats accessories, Apple TV and so on. Compared to the previous quarter – before the gadget went on sale – the ‘other’ category is up 56%, with quarterly revenue of $2.6bn,” Lee reports. “But Mr Cook urged against [napkin math] to determine watch sales. ‘It would not be be an accurate thing to look at the sequential change and assume that was the watch revenue,’ he said.”
“Parts of the category, such as the iPod, are in decline, making a precise number hard to isolate until Apple feels compelled to tell us,” Lee reports. “Having canvassed several analysts, the general wisdom is that Apple has sold between 2.5 million and 3 million watches… ‘Sales of the watch did exceed our expectations and they did so despite supply trailing demand at the end of the quarter,’ he said. To back this up, Mr Cook said sales in June were higher than in April or May, seemingly putting to bed some reports that sales had fallen off a cliff. Analysts agreed that was a good sign for future sales.”
Whatever estimates u have for the AppleWatch 1 thing is for sure, Apple sold more Watches in 2Q15 than all other smartwatch vendors combined
— Francisco Jeronimo (@fjeronimo) July 21, 2015
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: During the conference call, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that the Apple Watch sold more units in its first 9 weeks of availability than the iPhone (one million units) or the iPad (three million units) in their first nine weeks, so Apple Watch has sold more than 3 million units to date. The total number of Watch sales is significantly higher today as the quarter ended nearly a month ago on June 27, 2015 and the product has actually been available for purchase throughout that period, as supply finally started to flow to retail stores starting in mid-June.
The actual number doesn’t really matter at this stage. The first two months of the Apple Watch launch was horribly curtailed by supply issues (reportedly Taptic Engines that failed to pass Apple’s muster). Apple Watch is a product that requires strong word-of-mouth from early adopters to move to the next phase. That can’t happen if the early adopters are on months-long waiting lists. Once the product finally gets out there on people’s writs and people begin hearing about it/seeing it in action, the next phase can begin.
For now, it’s simply too early and the launch supply was too hampered to draw any firm conclusions except that we know that those who have the Watch, love the Watch. We have had Apple Watches on our wrists for the last three months and we will never go back to the primitive days of not wearing an Apple Watch.
Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses Apple Watch, July 21, 2015:
Let me talk about the Watch some. As you know, we made a decision back in September, quite several months ago not to disclose the shipments on the Watch and that was not a matter of not being transparent, it was a matter of not giving our competition insight that’s a product that we’ve worked really hard on. However, let me give you some color so to avoid reaching sort of a wrong conclusion. If you look at the other products category and look at the revenue in this category, it would not be an accurate thing to just look at the sequential change or the year over year change and assume that were the total Watch revenue because the aggregate balance of that category, both sequentially and year over year, is shrinking. Obviously iPod is a part of that, but there are other things in there, accessories and so forth, that are shrinking.
Secondly to provide a bit more color, sales of the Watch did exceed our expectations and they did so despite supply still trailing demand at the end of the quarter. And to give you a little additional insight, through the end of the quarter, in fact the Apple Watch sell-through was higher than the comparable launch periods of the original iPhone or the original iPad. And we were able to do that with having only 680 points of sale. And as you probably know, as I had reviewed earlier, the online sales were so great at the beginning, we were not able to feed inventory to our stores until mid-June. And so those points of sale pretty much, the overwhelming majority of the low numbers of sales were not there until the last two weeks of the quarter… Our June sales were higher than April or May. I realize that’s very different than what some of the, is being written, but the June sales were the highest. And so the Watch had a more of a back-ended kind of a skewing.
And so as I look at all of these things, we feel really great about how we did. Now our objective for the quarter wasn’t primarily sales. Beyond the very good news on sales, we’re more excited about how the product is positioned for the long term because we’re starting a new category. And as I back up and look at this, we have 8,500 apps. We’ve already announced the next operating system, watchOS 2. It will bring native apps which are going to be killer to the Watch. Even though the store layout was delayed, we’ve learned a lot about the buying experience. Based on that experience, we’re now planning to expand our channel before the holiday because we’re convinced that the Watch is going to be one of the top gifts of the holiday season.
Now most importantly of all of this is that customer sat is off the charts because we’ve constantly seen if you can get the customer sat off the charts you can wind up doing fairly well over time. We’ve also learned a lot about managing quite an assortment and so forth. And so I sort of back up and look at this and I feel fantastic about what the team has done and delivered and I know I never go anywhere without the Watch and it’s not because I’m the CEO of Apple. I’m that attached to it and I get lots of notes from a lot of people that feel the same way. And so that’s how I look at the Watch.
SEE ALSO:
Three months with Apple Watch convinces me it’s the best Apple product I’ve ever purchased – July 21, 2015
Non-techies love their Apple Watches even more than tech users – July 20, 2015
Apple Watch satisfaction is unprecedented at 97%; beats original iPhone and iPad – July 20, 2015
Taking off the Apple Watch for one week – don’t ever make me do that again! – July 14, 2015
My week without Apple Watch – July 7, 2015
The Inquirer reviews Apple Watch: ‘Undoubtedly the best smartwatch’ – June 26, 2015
Newt Gingrich reviews Apple Watch: ‘Very helpful and surprisingly natural’ – June 19, 2015
One month with my Apple Watch: Why I’m loving it – June 17, 2015
Dalrymple reviews Apple Watch: ‘My most personal review ever’ – June 16, 2015
Apple Watch: 45 days later – June 8, 2015
Computerworld’s deep-dive Apple Watch review: ‘After a month of use: Very positive’ – June 8, 2015
Workout and Activity accuracy – June 4, 2015
Living with Apple Watch: One month in – June 3, 2015
Apple Watch: The early adopter’s take – June 1, 2015
Jean-Louis Gassée: Five weeks with Apple Watch – May 31, 2015
Ben Thompson: Apple Watch is being serially underestimated – May 20, 2015
BGR reviews Apple Watch: ‘A major technological achievement; you won’t want to take it off’ – May 7, 2015
The Telegraph reviews Apple Watch: Object of desire – May 7, 2015
Cult of Mac reviews Apple Watch: ‘Futuristic, fun and fan-flipping-tastic’ – April 28, 2015
PC Magazine reviews Apple Watch: ‘The best smartwatch available’ – April 28, 2015
Apple Watch owners shame so-called professional reviewers – April 27, 2015
Tech.pinions’ Ben Bajarin reviews Apple Watch: ‘Powerful’ and ‘completely new’ – April 8, 2015