Sales of Apple Watch Drop by 90%
Apple hasn’t had a product flop since the ill-fated Newton tablet 20 years ago but the tech giant’s heavily hyped smartwatch isn’t exactly flying out of stores. According to research by Slice Intelligence, sales of the Apple Watch have dropped drastically since its debut.
The report claims that the week of the device’s April 10 launch, Apple was selling about 200,000 units per day for a total of 1.5 million. Since then, sales have dropped drastically down to 10,000 to 20,000 watches per day.
If that isn’t bad enough for Apple’s bottom line, two-thirds of the watches sold up to now have been the entry-level Sport models which sell for $349 and up. Slice claims that fewer than 2,000 units of the $10,000+ gold Edition model have been sold so far.
These figures look somewhat ominous for a company that has become accustomed to seeing its products inspire long lines outside Apple retail stores. The Apple Watch was supposed to present a whole new product category, one that the company’s faithful fans would buy at first sight because they absolutely had to have one.
Obviously those fans are not falling madly in love with the Apple Watch since just a fraction of iPhone owners have bothered to purchase one. The lack of enthusiasm for the Apple Watch is also sure to be unsettling for those competitors who have spent the last year and zillions of dollars developing wearable devices of their own.
Of course, it’s early in the product cycle of the Apple Watch and things could still pick up. The lucrative holiday shopping season in right around the corner and should give the device a welcome boost in sales. Apple could also have some tricks planned to boost sales like lower prices for some models and new bands, bracelets or accessories. Still, this definitely hasn’t been the sort of launch that Apple had in mind when the Apple Watch was unveiled last fall.
Simon Miller
I have a smart watch, the LG G Watch R, which IMHO looks better than the Apple and has twice the battery life for $150 less. However I rarely wear it for three good reasons. 1. It’s a real pain taking it off to charge it every 36 hours. 2. You can’t read it in sunlight. 3. having to tilt or move the watch and wait for it to come alive with the full graphics gets very old very quickly. Also if it does come alive when I’m sleeping with it, it lights up the whole room. So I’m not surprised the Apple watch is a flop, and as for the gold version…I mean come on…seriously…what were they thinking? They may as well just melt those back down.
Smart watch…nope give me a dumb mechanical watch any day.