The Apple Watch’s demise is greatly exaggerated, says Daniel Eran Dilger in an editorial for AppleInsider. Contesting a spate of news stories covering the supposedly ‘collapsing sales’ of the smartwatch, Dilger argues that the Apple Watch is in fact the most successful smartwatch ever released.
Most reports on the declining sales cited figures from Slice Intelligence, which itself relied primarily on ‘e-receipt’ data from its Automatic Package Tracker iOS app for its analysis, as Apple itself has not released any official sales figures. Basically, Dilger takes issue with the reliability of these figures, especially since Apple Watch sales were conducted mostly through Apple’s own website, and Slice doesn’t have access to those figures.
Dilger also points out that Slice’s data relies on US sales only, whereas China has tended to represent the biggest market for Apple devices in the past takes; and he takes issue with Slice’s comparison of Apple Watch sales data against FitBit figures, given that FitBit products are very different kinds of products with many low-end offerings available to consumers. The more accurate comparison, he argues, would be against Samsung’s Gear S, in which case the Apple Watch has proven far more successful in its sales.
That’s a pretty low bar though; the Gear S was not a great success in the market, and doesn’t offer a very useful basis for comparison. Still, even if Apple Watch sales figures are dropping in a trend close to that predicted by Slice, it’s undeniable that the Apple Watch is pioneering consumer adoption of the smartwatch, generating more buzz about such devices than there has ever been before. We just probably won’t know the degree to which this is happening until Apple finally releases some of its own figures.
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