My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: Apple Watch is Apple Most Successful Product – How to sell a Wearable and beat fitness Trackers and Android Wear Smartwatches

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Apple Watch is Apple Most Successful Product – How to sell a Wearable and beat fitness Trackers and Android Wear Smartwatches

Monday June 10th 2015 was the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) saw Apple reveal a few new product and Product Refreshes as reported in the article “Apple Music, iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan: Everything Apple announced at its WWDC 2015 developers conference”, published June 8, 2015 by Lori Grunin, CNET News and “Everything Apple announced at WWDC 2015 in one handy list”, published 08 July 2015 by NATT GARUN, The Next Web.

This was a week after Google I/O 2015, held over a two (2) days span from Thursday May 28th 2015 and Friday May 29th 2015 came and went as reported in the article “Google IO 2015: news, rumors and predictions”, published March 23 2015, By Michelle Fitzsimmons Techradar.

Google I/O 2015 has left a trail of very revealing Statistics in its wake as listed in my blog article entitled “Google IO Statistics - A Future Past of Growing Strong for All of Android's Children and a Future with Google ATAP Projects”.

But the list of Product updates, coming out of Apple WWDC 2015, is quite extensive upon reading, consisting mainly software, as no new hardware announcements were made:

1.      OS 10.11 El Capitan
2.      iOS 9
3.      Apple Music
4.      Developer Tools

I was somewhat disappointed that there were no announcements for Apple TV or the Apple iPad or any hardware updates, save for the prior update of the 15” Apple Macbook Pro as noted in the article “Apple updates 15-inch MacBook Pro with Force Touch and the 27-inch 5K Retina iMac with a lower starting price", published May 19, 2015, by Dan Ackerman, CNET News.  

Then again, they had just launched the Apple Watch and it's already smokin' hot with Celebrities pushing sales since Friday April 24th 2015  and third party accessories in the works as noted in my blog article entitled “Apple Watch delays on Pre-Order Day – How to Sell a Wearable using Apple Watch Edition on Celebrities and Third Party Wristbands”.

So how hot is the Apple Watch exactly?

Apple Watch is Apple Most Successful Product – How to sell a Wearable and beat fitness Trackers and Android Wear Smartwatches

Apple didn't reveal any sales figures for the Apple Watch during WWDC albeit based on analysts’ expectations. Typical Apple, keeping their cards close to their chest!

But that didn't stop analysts like Trip Chowdhry, Managing Director of Global Equities Research on Monday June 1st 2015 from predicting that by the end of the Second Quarter of 2015, Apple would have sold some 5 million Apple Watches as reported in the article “Watch is Apple's most successful product launch”, published Jun. 1, 2015, CNN Money.

Similarly, on Tuesday June 2nd 2015, a report released by investment firm Global Equities Research upped the ante a bit, stating that Apple had actually received some 7 million Apple Watch Orders based on Developer tracking records.

Apparently, they'd only shipped some 2.5 million Apple Watches since Friday 24th of April 2015 because of a lack of spare parts to fulfill all those orders as well as shipping delays from China where they're made.

Compared to previous Apple Product, launches, this makes the Apple Watch their most successful launch to date when the Quarterly sales after launch are compared:

§  50,000 Apple Mac in 1984
§  125,000 Apple iPods sold in 2001
§  1.1 million Apple  iPhone's sold in 2007
§  3.3 million Apple iPads shipped in 2010

Based on analyst IDC stats for the last two (2) years, a total of 11.4 million wearables, including Fitness Trackers and Smartwatches, have been shipped worldwide in 2014 as noted in my blog article entitled “IDC Stats for Wearables in the First Quarter of 2015 - US$13 Mi Band Fitness Monitor Xiaomi No. 2 as Apple Watch to dominate Smartwatch segment by Q4 2015”.

If there is even an ounce of truth to these reports, then the Apple Watch would have completely claimed half of the total market.

Move over Xiaomi and Fitbit – Apple is now King as Apple Watch by Appointments is how you sell a Wearable

Had Apple Watch sales been included in the IDC Statistics, they would have trounced the US$13 Mi Band Fitness Monitor from Chinese based Xiaomi for Second Place and possibly beaten the Fitbit and their range of wearables for Pole Position in Wearables Arms Race, no pun intended.

Clearly, Google Android Wear has been totally beaten, only managing a measly 770,000 smartwatches during all of 2014 as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “Analyst IDC logs Wearables Profitable in Q1 2015 Fitness Tracker Business”.

So, while I do my detailed analysis of WWDC later in the week, it’s good to know that the Apple Watch being sold by Appointment only was indeed a good decision as explained in my blog article entitled “Apple Watch Appointment Fittings coming Friday April 10th 2015 - Why Apple Appointments sets trend for How to sell a Wearable”.

It has now set a hard trend for Google Android Wear to follow. Worse, Apple only launched the Apple Watch with 3,500 apps, compared to Google Android Wear’s 4000 as noted in the article “Can App Store magic strike twice for Apple Watch?”, published by Roger Cheng and Shara Tibken, CNET News.

Worse, they weren’t just extensions of those on the Apple iPhone and not Native Apps. Even so, if Apple decided to make improvements to Apple Watch iOS 2.0 to include Native Apps and other security adjustments, we might see an explosion in the same of Apple Watch. By 2016, they’ll basically control the market!

Clearly, after having beaten even the top seller of smartwatches to date, the Pebble Steel, if only in analyst estimates as noted in “Apple Watch pre-orders sold out until June 2015 - How 1 million served equals Pebble Watch 2 years Sales in How to Sell a Wearable”, Appointments is clearly how one sells a Wearable!





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