Ben Bajarin, writing for Tech.pinions, worked with Wristly to pull together a customer satisfaction survey of Apple Watch owners.
When we looked at the responses from those in our panel who participated in our first customer satisfaction survey or indicated they received their Apple Watch in the April-May-June quarter, we discovered something interesting. Those who owned the watch since April had the highest overall satisfaction rating. When just looking at satisfaction by month of Apple Watch acquisition, those who purchased the Watch in April also had the highest number of people who selected “very satisfied” out of any other month in which the Watch was acquired. Our interpretation of this is clear — those who owned the watch the longest seemed to become more satisfied over time.
That last bit is important. A product that makes you more satisfied the longer you own it is doing its job very well. This bodes well for Apple Watch.
Even more interesting is this nugget on so-called FitBit abandonment rates:
The number bounces around at about 50%, rising or falling a little over time but remaining remarkably constant. In one sense, that’s obviously fairly bad news – in addition to the fact that very few Fitbit buyers purchase a second device, it would appear that half of those who bought one stop using it after a period of time.
Not so for the Apple Watch:
Even those who got the watch in the earliest cycles of April-May are still wearing it today. In fact, the largest group that say they still wear it all day, every day are those who got it in April. During my analysis of wearables, dating back to well before Apple announced and released the Watch, I pounded on the point that the vast majority of research surrounding the category and all the existing players was that consumer response indicated they saw little to no value in the product. That trend is roughly in line today with all but the Apple Watch. The hard data is from my own research and from Wristly’s as well. It makes it hard to not conclude that, at least for now, the Apple Watch remains in a category by itself.
Get the product right, and folks will stick around, come back for more.
About the first quote: There’s another point of view. People, who bought it in April were the first, who bought this gadget. This means a lot of them are die hard Apple fans, who love every new gadget from Apple, and they are among the first to own a new one. So, in the end it’s hard so say, with this information given, that long time owners are generally more satisfied with their Apple Watch.
Not necessarily established Apple fans, but people who specifically want this watch. They’re obviously going to be happier than people who took a wait and see attitude. But yes, big-time fans. Though it should be noted that many of them didn’t get their watches until June or later. So maybe there is some validity to the interpretation.
also, the april group is the largest one that says they still wear the watch today – this also supports your theory. otherwise the may, june,… – group would still be wearing it more. looks like the watch doesn’t win non-die hard apple fans over (or at least has the die hards say that they are more satisfied with it than ever, so they can justify having spent 400$+ on a luxury gadget. also, this group is probably not as rich as the later, casual buyers, who also didn’t buy a product before trying it on – so more reason to justify)
The most interesting numbers in that article IMO concern the percentage of iphone owners who plan to buy a wearable this holiday season. According to his data 48% of all iphone owners plan to buy one and about 19% plan to buy an Apple Watch specifically. That’s a very high number and I find it really hard to credit if it is supposed to be representative of all iphone owners. Unfortunately, he does not provide any details about his survey as those are reserved for the clients.