During Apple’s earnings call yesterday, Tim Cook carved out a section of his presentation to address Apple Watch sales numbers.
A little parsing:
Sales of the watch did exceed our expectations, and they did so despite supply still trailing demand at the end of the quarter.
That’s referring to Apple constraining sales to online-only, long shipping dates, not being able to make enough Apple Watches to meet demand.
To give you a little additional insight, through the end of the quarter, in fact the Apple Watch sell-through was higher than the comparable of the launch periods of the original iPhone or the original iPad.
This post elaborates on this point. Apple Watch numbers, at this point in the product lifecycle, are better than iPhone sales, better than the original iPad sales, at the same point in those lifecycles.
We were able to do that with having only 680 points of sale, and as you probably know, as I had reviewed earlier, the online sales were so great at the beginning, we were not able to feed inventory to our stores until mid June, and so those points of sale pretty much the overwhelming of the low numbers of sales were not there until the last two weeks of the quarter.
Sales didn’t rollout to stores until there were only two weeks left in the quarter. This doesn’t mean that the next quarter sales will be off the charts. It’s still early in the adoption cycle and watchOS 2 is still in beta. Only time will tell us how successful Apple Watch will be in the long run.
But Tim followed with this point:
Most importantly of all of this, is the customer sat is off the charts. Because we’ve constantly seen that if you can get the customer sat off the charts you can wind up doing fairly well over time.
The “customer sat” refers to existing customer satisfaction with the product. With a sat of 97%, it’s clear that people who own an Apple Watch love their Apple Watch. And that is a huge point. If anything is a predictor of future success, tremendous user satisfaction is that predictor.
[Transcript via Six Colors]
Ordered my 42 mm. stainless steel with sport band online today. Still couldn’t buy it in stores in my country. The stock has ran out since the first day. What a failure. /s
All these “mind-boggling” stats and the NYTs can only write:
Apple Profit Up 38%, but iPhone Sales Disappoint Wall Street
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/technology/apple-earnings-q3.html?hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
Yet they close with:
“Besides, Apple has another ace in its pocket: $202.8 billion in cash, up from $164.5 billion a year ago.’
Analysts are f_ckers selling snake oil to the masses and the NYTs are their bitches. Why anyone would make investment choices based on their guidance is beyond my dumb-blonde brain. They can’t forecast the weather, let alone the Second Coming. And their collusion runs very deep.
Instead, try buying Apple shares few weeks after an Apple announcement, after the price tanks (thanks to Apple’s disappointing, yet ‘mind-boggling’ profits, etc.). Then you sell those shares a week or so before a big product announcement or quarterly (when the price has rebounded from it’s previous slump). After this announcement, the price will typically tank again and you just wait for the price to bottom out before you start buying again. You ride that to the next big product announcement and repeat the steps. Simple, buy low/sell high.
Listening to analysts will only ensure you get screwed every time you follow their guidance. They’re only looking out for their big whales, principally, and then of course, their trading fees.
They forgot to mention Wall Street is full of idiots. They think Costco should be more like Wal Mart! Who can rely on the views of such fools?
“… despite supply still trailing demand at the end of the quarter.”
Q. How many Apple Watches did Apple sell?
A. All of them.
This is why pundits have been waiting for a “new category” from Apple – so they can pan it prematurely.
They tend to believe every business should be like Wal-Mart. Commoditize everything; profit before quality. Dominate a market, extract all the revenue possible, cut corners on products and services, then shit all over that sector’s economy and move on to another one.