Apple Watch outsold iPhone 2-to-1 in its debut year

The Apple Watch celebrated its first birthday on Sunday and, while Apple has yet to publicly disclose sales figures, it seems that the company’s debut wearable device had quite the impressive debut year!

According to analysts, Apple likely sold around 12 million Apple Watches over the past year: around twice the number of iPhones it sold in the first twelve months of Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.

The figures put reports that the Apple Watch is a sales disappointment into stark relief — especially when you consider that, with an average price of $500, the combined $6 billion Apple has raked in from the Apple Watch represents approximately three times the annual revenue of rival activity tracker Fitbit.

There’s so far been disagreement over when exactly the Apple Watch 2 will arrive, but a recent report suggested that Apple has started divvying up component orders among its supply chain. One analyst, Brian White, suggests that the Apple Watch 2 will be 40 percent thinner than its predecessor, while others have claimed it will not look all that different to the v1.0 model at all.

What everyone seems to agree on is that future Apple Watch versions will achieve greater levels of independence from the iPhone, thereby making it more of a device in its own right than an iPhone accessory.

Still, for now it seems that Apple can breathe a sigh of relief at the fact that the first major new product line launched under Tim Cook has successfully completed its first year. Now if only it could match the upward trajectory of iPhone sales over the years that follow!

Source: WSJ

Luke Dormehl

Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.