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Apple, Which Doesn't Reveal Watch Sales Data, Says Watch Sales Are Great (mashable.com)
Though several companies are struggling to sell their smartwatches, Apple CEO Tim Cook says sales of Apple Watch set a record during the first week of holiday shopping. Cook added that the current quarter is on track to be the best ever for the product. The only problem: The company, which loves to numbers do all the talking, won't disclose how many Apple Watch units were shipped or sold. From a report on Mashable: "During the first week of holiday shopping, our sell-through of Apple Watch was greater than any week in the product's history. And as we expected, we're on track for the best quarter ever for Apple Watch," Cook told Reuters in an email. This is not surprising: The company has never revealed any sales data for the Watch, bundling it with the "other products" category in its earnings reports. There have been quite a few attempts to extrapolate what this means in numbers, but the truth is that any of those attempts could be a few million units wrong either way.
Still working as strong as ever despite the death of Steve Jobs.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! The Great Oz has spoken!
Apple watch was a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
Now, if the device was truly stand alone, that's one thing, but needing to pair it up with an iPhone makes it far less interesting. As a minimalist, I have no use for a watch or any other jewelry for that matter.
Sales are GREAT! They're YUGE! I don't have exact figures for you, but trust me this is the best product we've ever launched, hands down. We just can't make enough of them. We're selling more of these than we've ever sold anything before.
They're selling bigly.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
That's funny. I never see an iWatch or Apple Watch. When the first one came out, some reviewers wore them for a bit. Then most of them admitted they stopped wearing them as they just didn't do much and weren't needed. I can't remember the last time I saw an Apple Watch in the wild.
Fitbits? Sure, see them all the time. My Microsoft Band 2? Nope, I never see those either. I think I am the only one using one.
"During the first week of holiday shopping, our sell-through of Apple Watch was greater than any week in the product's history."
They're saying that in the first week of holiday shopping they sold two watches. They sold one watch per week since launch, so the rate of sales has effectively doubled!
I saw a guy walking once with one. He looked ashamed.
Wait, so a niche market with way too many players are struggling to turn over inventory when an 800 pound gorilla comes in and is having "their best week yet" (whatever that means)?
Let's see...
X total prospective buyers of smart watch thingys,
Y Apple Watch purchasers,
X - Y = ? leftover purchasers for everyone else.
3rd grade math story problems are hard, and definitely need Slashdot headlines.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I have a semi-smart watch. ($25 Martian).
I love it... never wear it though because I never remember to charge it, so in hindsight, perhaps a mistake. My watch battery lasts a week, I can't imagine how old it gets to charge watch every day, no matter how awesome it is. Bad enough charging the phone.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I wonder if Jobs would have so completely run out of ideas for new tech if he was still alive.
Nice to see I'm in good company.
We are in a blizzard watch right now
Well, you're a /. reader and can crack that Cook code ; but 95% people can't. So, the result is most people see the Watch as a success and will run buy one..
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
We used to sell one watch every week. This week we sold two! NEW RECORD!
.. well, it is!
My Salary is $200K/month, that's great too.
Yup, if they were really selling well, they would have bragged about the figures. Since they are not, they are not.
I see the fitbot watches the most, then Apple watches. the rarest is the android ones. I wish someone would make a decent round one that looks like a diver watch with some real waterproofing and at least 2 days of battery life.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
While Apple may not publish numbers if you want someone elses guess you can read this article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/06/apple_watch_sales_go_over_a_cliff_down_28m_per_quarter_in_a_year/
Apple watches lost 12.6% market share and had a -71% year over year growth.
iWatches are not practical at all, are too big, have a feel of cheap/plastic/a toy watch, and are too wayyy overpriced. The technology is still very early, as much as only by the time Apple got to iPhone 5S, it was worth to use it. Despite having many of the Apple things at home, the iWatch wont be in my list for several years to come. Add to that the fact I have not used a watch for years now, and the iWatch is even less appealing. As for social status, I do prefer an expensive analog watch to go with a suit for a wedding for instance, than the iWatch...which is ridiculous for a straight male wearing a suit. Apple also seems quite lost in their orientation, and it is sad to see that the dead of Jobs put someone there that seems more worried about a political affirmation and giving face to minorities than being maniacal with the glitches of events and improving the quality of the current Apple portfolio.
So are you suggesting that they're not selling great? That they're making a loss on them? Hiding the bad sales figures by lying?
That sounds like Left Wing Media bias, totally unfair, Apple's watch business really is worth $10 billion! And just ignore the borrowing of small amounts at prime rates.... that in no way suggests the watch business is bankrupt. That's the nasty nasty media and their nasty nasty lies.
Apple carries ZERO debt. Hasn't had any in DECADES. So quit lying. If they would be borrowing for anything, it would be to complete their new headquarters.
During a keynote Cook showed a slide listing the top revenue generating watch companies - this was based on a table that was published elsewhere.
Cook then showed the total revenue generated by the Apple watch (his was v1) being 2nd only to Rolex, which sells between 500K and 1 Million luxury watches per year.
Well, haters say the Apple Watch is a flop. I don't know, I think I wouldn't mind flopping with that level of revenue...
here is a link with picture of the slide:
http://www.wareable.com/apple/...
I pay zero taxes, that makes me smart!
Exactly. Plain and simple. Instead they let the media churn out make believe numbers for them. What a shit show of a corporation.
I always thought...Apple watch was a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
You can make toast easily in a pan or an in an oven. A toaster then, is an answer to a problem that doesn't exist.
Why does everything have to be the only possible answer to a problem? The Apple Watch is not the ultimate answer to any one problem - but it is more convenient for a lot of things. It's been really handy for dismissing calls in meetings because I can quickly glance to see if I need to take it, and cover the watch if I want to dismiss it so my phone stays in my pocket. It means my phone is not left on tables as much and is less likely to be forgotten...
It also is handy around the house, I don't have to have my phone with me to see I've got a text message or receive a call. Would I use the watch normally for a phone call? No but in that one case, it's quite handy.
It also does make for a really great fitness device. After all it is fully programmable so you have custom apps for any purpose that you can quickly glance at. Again the phone would serve also but the watch is just much handier.
It also means that I am less tied to a particular form factor of phone. I like to run so if I were just using my phone for tracking I'd be inclined to get a smaller phone so I could strap it on my arm... but since I have the Apple Watch I have the larger size of phone than I might otherwise.
Now, if the device was truly stand alone, that's one thing
The airily named "series 2" includes GPS so you can indeed do some things (like record runs) without a phone. That is a natural evolution but for the moment I'm a lot happier with a watch that easily lasts a 16-20 hour day than I would be with a cell connection I almost never use.
Also of course, around the house all of the Apple Watches are connected via WiFi and so do not need the phone on your person...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We sold 4 watches this quarter.
Thats up FIFTY percent from last quarter.
And still more than double any of our competitors.
Great job team.
Woooooooooooooosh!
As Donald would say "Wrong!!!" Apple borrows massively in the US to fund expansion as it is pretty US cash poor. All its Cash is sitting in Ireland waiting for a Tax Amnesty President to get elected so they can bring it back without paying taxes. Now that Donald's been elected Apple can bring back its 200 Billion. That should lead to a crazy round of acquiring of startups. Good time to be in the valley. The worker drones have been scared by Trump and keeping their head down and working towards their citizenships; yields are negative so in search of yields investors are giving all their money to VCs who have too much money and not enough scalable ideas to fund so if you can show them a slide deck for a potential 1 billion business they will give you 100 million (dont try asking for smaller amounts they do not have the menta bandwidth to track multiple small companies) and eventually when the big Tax evaders like Apple and Google bring their cash pile home they will be looking to buy startups (which is why VCs are funding startups whose business model has no profit but is acquirable by a FANG)
**Life is too short to be serious**
I bought the Huawei watch the day it came out. I was hoping to use it in bars/restaurants to allow me to keep my phone in my pocket, but still get a buzz if an important message (or pagerduty alert) comes in.
It does do this, more or less. But over the past year and a bit, I really hoped some of the shortcomings would be addressed, and they haven't.
The reality is it's laggy, "ok google" doesn't work more than 10-15% of the time, and even when it does, half the time it ignores the query. The speaker isn't used as it should be. It constantly loses bluetooth connection to my device. Wifi handoff is sloppy. There is no brightness control when in ambient mode. No on-watch app control; I do not want every single phone app with a watch counterpart installed!
My dad as the iWatch, and it just works. It's great. It's how it should be.
I've been an Android dev and user since Cupcake, and have no love for Apple, but I have to hand this one to them. They did it correctly, and everyone else failed (either due to hardware issues or Android Wear itself).
If Google doesn't abandon AndroidWear before releasing 2.0, let's hope things get better.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
They're not just great they're yuge!
I know a couple of people who bought the new watch because it accurately measures pushing activity. There finding it useful for communications, as well. Much less fumbling around in bags for a phone.
Actually, they've been carrying debt for the last couple years when it became cheap to do so, and they couldn't repatriate their earnings w/o huge tax losses.
Nothing major (for their scale of business), but it is somewhere on the order of $50B. That may sound a lot to you, but it's a couple weeks of sales to them.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
apple borrrows all the time and not just to complete their Mos Eisley spaceport Your either ignorant or stupid. Ill let you decide.
That's good enough for me, you've got my vote! You don't get to be as big and successful as Apple without knowing what you're about. Make watches great again!
Watches are for slaves.
Myself, I don't need a digital overseer strapped to my wrist telling me when to do things.
Watches are so last decade, grampa
Seriously who the frack uses a watch, or an Apple Watch nowadays, but lusers and narcos?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Or consider it this way. Tax laws are such that it is CHEAPER TO BORROW MONEY than to repatriate the cash.
Borrowing billions of dollars at 5% costs LESS than bringing in a billion dollars.
That's why they want the tax holiday. The real debate though is whether or not a tax holiday will bring benefit to the US - will Apple and others be using the new-found cash to spend inside the US or just horde it?
Anyone ever see a sales breakdown or information from Amazon about their devices? With Amazon, everything is fantastic with no information. Apple can't do anything right.
I always thought he was saying "big league".
I bought one and used it for about a week, I returned it. Its garbage. The battery life sucks, the only 'app' that is allowed to access the gps data is the apple activity app, and then your data is locked forever away in their ecosystem. Fuck that.
You're just reading the news release wrong.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The word you're looking for is embiggen. It is a perfectly cromulent word.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well, to be accurate, the debt of $50 billion is about 18 months of profit, at Q4 2016's $9 billion in earnings rate. When paying back loans, it's earnings that matter, not revenue. Unless you want to stiff suppliers and employees and such...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Or consider it this way. Tax laws are such that it is CHEAPER TO BORROW MONEY than to repatriate the cash.
Borrowing billions of dollars at 5% costs LESS than bringing in a billion dollars.
That right there is indicative that our business tax laws are pretty messed up. The problem of having the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world - nearly double that of the OECD average - is a situation that will hopefully be resolved in the next year to the betterment of ALL US companies.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Q4 is always low.
$50B is about 12 months of profit.
http://images.apple.com/newsro...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
My Apple Watch has done nothing to improve my life. I would have taken it back, but I missed the 15 day deadline
I don't know whether to commend you for missing the reference to the recent US Presidential campaign or to castigate you for missing obvious satire.
Your either ignorant or stupid. Ill let you decide.
It is for the best, since you're apparently both...
I don't know whether to commend you for missing the reference to the recent US Presidential campaign or to castigate you for missing obvious satire.
Apparently, both are in order.
;-)
Apparently, my post was uninformed on many levels...
Lets say I as an individual indulged in the same behaviour these companies indulge in. Put so much of income into 401K that I could not pay the rent so had to borrow money to pay the rent. There would be an expectation of paying the tax when I take the money out of 401K. But what if I lobbied for a Tax Amnesty to take money out of 401K without paying taxes and till the time that Amnesty got passed kept borrowing money
If I indulged in this behaviour would you call the Personal Tax system too high and needing reform or would you say I am delusional?
**Life is too short to be serious**