Only a small proportion of consumers who bought an Apple Watch have actually received the device, according to a Business Insider article by Rob Price. Market analyst Slice Intelligence believes that on the Monday following the device’s first weekend ostensibly on the market, about 78 percent of its buyers haven’t actually received the product.
That’s because of a significant supply shortage which, to be fair to Apple, we were all aware of as the device was hitting the market on Friday. Apple acknowledged the supply shortage shortly after the device was available for preorder, and by April 24th was actually advising consumers that many of them would receive their Apple Watches sooner than originally expected.
Still, the shortage is part and parcel with an unusual overall launch strategy that many could perceive as wrongheaded: The smartwatch was available for preorder on April 10, and would then official go on sale on April 24, but not in Apple stores – only in a few luxury shops. Most analysts have interpreted these strange machinations as an effort on Apple’s part to test the market’s appetite before committing to wholesale production of the smartwatch. But others, as Price points out in his article, can’t help but see it as a bungling of the rollout.
Either way, the Apple Watch appears to be a pretty solid success in terms of sales. It’s not yet clear if demand for the device has met the high expectations of some analysts – Apple hasn’t yet released any official data – but market analysts seem to believe that sales are going well, and as a general rule, when demand outstrips the supply of one’s product, that’s a good thing.
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