Apple Watch demand is ‘so strong,’ says Best Buy CEO

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Apple Watch sales figures are basically analyst roulette right now.
Apple Watch sales are doing great.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple still hasn’t publicly released sales figures for the Apple Watch, but according to Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly, the wearable device is doing great.

“Demand for Apple Watch has been so strong in the stores and online,” Joly told analysts during the company’s latest earnings call.

In fact, Joly claims heavy demand for Apple products is a major factor in Best Buy’s strong earnings — which beat Wall Street expectations with a reported 3.8 percent rise in domestic sales.

Given that Best Buy only started selling the Apple Watch earlier this month, the device didn’t directly impact the latest quarterly earnings, although Joly is clearly pleased enough with the figures that he spent time discussing them during the call.

Joly says he expects the Apple Watch to be on sale at all 1,050 of Best Buy’s big-box stores by the end of September.

He also says Best Buy plans to update its Apple shop-in-shops at 740 stores, by adding new fixtures and additional display tables for more iPhones, iMacs and iPads. This work is reportedly complete at 350 stores, and will be finished in an extra 170 stores in time for the holidays.

Best Buy will also start selling AppleCare this quarter, as well as testing a new program that will see the retailer become an authorized Apple service provider at 50 stores.

Overall, the news is a definite positive for Best Buy — but it’s also great for Apple. Despite record-high levels of satisfaction for a new Apple device, the Apple Watch has so far been dogged by negative reports claiming everything from rapidly declining user interest to a demand so weak that even Apple’s manufacturers are losing money on the device.

Hopefully Joly’s comments will serve as a correction for some of those rumors.

And maybe help drive up the stock price in the process, by demonstrating that Cupertino is far from a one-trick pony.

Source: Fortune

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