I wish I could have a failure like the Apple Watch!
Despite naysayers claiming the Apple Watch hasn’t taken off as Apple hoped, a new set of figures suggests that Apple has shipped close to 7 million Apple Watches since its launch — a figure which outstrips all other vendors’ combined smartwatch shipments in the past five financial quarters.
Research firm Canalys notes that Apple was the only smart watch vendor to ship more than 300,000 units in Q3 2015, the same quarter that Pebble launched its Pebble Time Steel wearable.
As Canalys notes:
“All eyes will be on Apple Watch sales during the Q4 holiday quarter as a barometer of the strength of the nascent smart watch market. ‘After experiencing significant supply chain constraints early on, Apple managed to overcome its production struggles with the Apple Watch and is building momentum going into Q4,’ said Analyst Daniel Matte.
‘Shipments are steadily increasing as it has greatly expanded the Watch’s channel footprint internationally.’ VP and Principal Analyst Chris Jones added, ‘watchOS 2 has brought native apps to the platform, and new colors and styles have refreshed the lineup, but Apple needs to continue to generate demand six months after launch.’”
Although third-party shipment figures aren’t always 100 percent accurate, these figures do tally with what we’ve been expecting in terms of Apple’s dominance.
Another recent report of 11,000 people by Kantar U.S. Insights suggests that an impressive 92 percent (unsurprisingly) recognize the Apple brand more than any other in the wearables category — with Fitbit coming second with 47 percent, followed by Google and Samsung in the low 30s.
Apple has been less-than-eager to reveal sales (supposedly for competitive reasons), but it is thought that the Apple Watch helped rake in $1.7 billion over the past financial quarter. It’s not yet doing iPhone numbers, obviously, but it’s certainly on track to have Apple’s best-ever first year as a new product line.
