Apple’s wearables business continues to grow like gangbusters.
Sales of the Apple Watch grew 50% compared to the same quarter last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said on Apple’s Q2 2019 quarterly analyst call Tuesday.
If Apple’s wearables business — which includes the Apple Watch and the popular AirPods earbuds — were a stand-alone company, it would be in the Fortune 200, Cook said.
Apple’s wearables business also includes its home and accessories categories. Together, sales in the March quarter hit a record $5.1 billion, up from $3.94 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Cook said the Fortune 200 milestone was “an amazing statistic since it’s only been four years since we released the Apple Watch.”
Rapid growth for Apple wearables
The growth has been pretty rapid. In May 2018, Apple’s wearables division was nearly the size of a Fortune 300 company.
Cook didn’t reveal actual unit sales numbers. Apple has never released detailed sales statistics for its wearables business (and has, in fact, quit releasing detailed sales numbers for all its hardware, saying Wall Street should focus on revenue rather than unit sales).
Although wearables revenue remains relatively small when compared to iPhone, these products represent an important strategic area of interest for Apple. Apple Watch in particular plays a key role as the company continues to expand into wellness and health care, one of the world’s biggest industries.
Cupertino is busy boosting technology like HealthKit and ResearchKit that can take data from the Apple Watch and share it with health researchers and health care providers.
Apple Watch: World’s favorite smartwatch
Apple CFO Luca Maestri said wearables sales set a new record for the Q2 quarter, which ended March 30, 2019. He said the Apple Watch is the best-selling and most-loved smartwatch anywhere, citing third-party market research. The Q2 results are the best results ever for a non-holiday quarter, he said.
Maestri also said the Apple Watch is attracting a lot of newbies. Three-quarters of new Apple Watch customers had never worn a smartwatch before, he said.
Cook said the growth is driven by customers’ interest in fitness and health. During the quarter, Apple brought the new ECG app on the Apple Watch Series 4 to Hong Kong and 19 EU companies.
There have been several reports of the ECG app alerting users to previously undiagnosed heart problems. Cook said he gets almost daily emails from customers who said the Apple Watch “has significantly affected their lives.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
