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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday April 14 2015, @04:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the apple-does-no-wrong dept.

The Register, MarketWatch, and Mashable are reporting an estimated 1 million sales of Apple's wrist augment based on Slice Intelligence's analysis of ereceipt data. Demand has been strong enough to push back deliveries by weeks, and "Apple is set to sell all of its production volume for the first three months".

Putting those figures together, that means Apple could have shifted 1.24 million watches on its first day of preorders on Friday. How does that stack up in Apple history? Back in 2007, it took the company 74 days to sell its one millionth iPhone, and it took two years to get to that milestone with the iPod. [It took Apple 28 days to sell 1 million iPads.]

Apple seems to have underestimated short-term demand for its latest product, and may intend to sell 20 million Apple Watches in the first year of availability.

 
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:05AM (#170223)

    Wear an Apple Watch to make sure everyone around you knows you are Gay.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by sigma on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:28AM

    by sigma (1225) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:28AM (#170229)

    Or that you're a sheep.

    Btw, the world has changed since the alt examples given in TFA happened. Now selling a million tacky gadgets in 24 hours isn't such a big deal. Look at what their competition is doing.

    XIAOMI SETS A NEW GUINNESS WORLD RECORD BY SELLING 2.1 MILLION SMARTPHONES IN 24 HOURS

    " rel="url2html-26333">http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/xiaomi-sets-a-new-guinness-world-record-by-selling-2-1-million-smartphones-in-24-hours

    • (Score: 2) by fishybell on Tuesday April 14 2015, @06:33AM

      by fishybell (3156) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @06:33AM (#170241)

      That's [digitaltrends.com] not really comparing apples to apples. Apple sold a million pf the same device that are new to the market and Xiaomi sold 2 million various smartphones that were already on the market, but now on sale. Pre-orders vs. sales aren't really the same thing. That'd be akin to extrapolating retail success by only taking into account Black Friday.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by mojo chan on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:29AM

        by mojo chan (266) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:29AM (#170258)

        It doesn't really matter, the bottom line is that there are plenty of companies selling large numbers of gadgets in the first day and as a statistic it's kinda meaningless now. That goes double for Apple - if they released an iTurd in Box they would still sell a million, probably on launch day, and even if you had to provide your own turd.

        --
        const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Aichon on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:09AM

      by Aichon (5059) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:09AM (#170251)

      Look at what their competition is doing.

      Yes, let's. Quoting the article you just linked (emphasis mine):

      Xiaomi (pronounced “SHOW mee”) ran a 12-hour flash sale that ended up selling more than 2.1 million smartphones via Mi.com [...]

      While Apple sold 4 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units in the first 24 hours of availability and 10 million units during the opening weekend for both phones, Ars Technica points out that the Guinness World Record is for “most mobile phones sold on a single online platform in 24 hours.”

      Which is to say, Xiaomi's numbers, while impressive, were only record-breaking because they channeled all of the sales through a single store, not because they were impressive compared to the competition. If you're going to suggest that Apple's numbers aren't impressive, that's fine, but at least check to make sure that the article you're linking doesn't spend a paragraph undermining your point. Besides which, you're talking about comparing against the competition, so let's compare against the actual competition, since we can't expect the numbers for a mature market like smartphones to be in any way comparable to those of an immature market like smartwatches.

      Doing some quick searching, it looks like the Samsung Gear managed to sell around 50,000 units [businesskorea.co.kr] in the first two months (Samsung reported 800,000 units shipped in that time, which means they probably took a major hit); the Pebble—which is by every account I've read the most successful smartwatch so far (and is the one I like to root for)—sold 1M units over the first 18 months [wikipedia.org] or so; and the combined sales for the Android Wear platform (i.e. LG G Watch + Moto 360 + Samsung Gear Live + etc.) totaled 720,000 units for all of 2014 [canalys.com] (side note: Xiaomi managed to put up 103,000 sales in a single day...for their Mi Band, which is kinda like a FitBit device). So, now that we've put Apple's numbers in context against their actual competition, we can say that the Apple Watch numbers really are rather impressive if they're at 1M already.

      Except that they're not at 1M. They're higher.

      Because what the summary and all three of the articles it links to get wrong is that Slice Intelligence never estimated that Apple sold 1M Apple Watches. Going back to the original report [slice.com], what you'll see is that they estimated 957,000 buyers for the Apple Watch (which the articles all seem to be rounding off to 1M), but they also state that the purchasers bought an average of 1.3 Apple Watches apiece, yielding a total sales that would actually be around 1.25M. On top of that, those numbers are for the US alone, since Slice didn't mention the other 12 or so countries where the Apple Watch launched the same day as the US.

      All of which is to say, Apple managed to sell in one day and in one country nearly twice what their combined Android Wear competition managed to sell globally in the entire previous year. Given that this is a nascent market, I expect that we'll see some more impressive numbers from the Android side within the next few months, but, at least for this moment in time, posting 1.25M sales in the first 24 hours in such a small market is an absolutely remarkable feat.

      Or, as you might put it, it means that there are a LOT of sheep.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Tuesday April 14 2015, @10:45AM

        by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @10:45AM (#170318)

        You've got to admit that it's harder to sell that many phones when you don't have every news organization in the world providing you free advertising.

        • (Score: 3, Disagree) by Tork on Tuesday April 14 2015, @06:39PM

          by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 14 2015, @06:39PM (#170485)
          If you think it's wrong that Apple gets 'free advertising' then maybe you should reconsider generating noise in threads related to Apple topics.
          --
          🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by quacking duck on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:06PM

            by quacking duck (1395) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:06PM (#170499)

            Indeed. I swear, in most of the mainstream media articles, the majority of root-level comments are actually made by Apple bashers. Only then do the Apple fans (those who like but have also criticized the company and its products) and the occasional Apple zealot (unthinking, unwavering support) get involved, because no one is allowed to have an unanswered attack on the internet.

            Those who bash Apple and then ask why the media for giving Apple all this attention, need only to look in the mirror for part of the answer.

            • (Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:28PM

              by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:28PM (#170512)
              Check out: http://apple.slashdot.org/?page=1&fhfilter=apple [slashdot.org] ... and note the high number of comments those stories get. I've actually seen these people bitch about having too many stories about Apple. Normally I wouldn't mind, but ... geez... when you're on an ad-supported site try to keep cause-and-effect in mind.
              --
              🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:31AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:31AM (#170230) Homepage

    Or generally somebody to avoid.

    The gays who don't live in the Bay Area are pretty fun and not all that obnoxious. However, being a gay who chooses to live in the Bay Area carries mandates not only to own the iWatch (and ensuring everybody around them knows that) but watching MSNBC and spouting it as gospel, all before electing Hillary Clinton for president.

    Bay Area gays are one of the most insidious groupings of fifth-columists to infest America.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:38AM (#170231)

      electing Hillary Clinton for president

      I doesn't matter who you vote for. President-To-Be-Elected Hillary is already the winner. But don't you just love those fabulous get-togethers at the polling places where you and all your neighbors can pretend you're making a difference.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @10:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @10:54AM (#170321)

    You just found the killer app!

    Now I definitely don't want one...