8 ms·

This makes it clear that Apple Watch isn't the kind of category creator like iPhone, but rather like Apple TV.

by obblekk 11y ago

serve_yay 11y ago
How so?
- jstsch 11y ago
  Look in the data summary (PDF below). "Other Products" which includes the Apple Watch grew 'only' a billion year over year. http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy15datasum_2.pdf http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy15datasum_2.pdf
  - aetherson 11y ago
    So I'm maybe missing something, but Other Products 2014 didn't include Beats headphones sales, right? Because the acquisition didn't happen until Aug 1, 2014? And Other Products 2015 explicitly does include Beats Electronics. And wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics) says that Beats revenue in 2013 was $1.5 billion. If all that is right -- and it may not be -- then that implies that Beats + Apple Watch < $1b revenue, which would indicate that something is very wrong. Indeed, it would imply that something is SO wrong that I doubt I have the facts above correct. EDIT: Duh, thanks thedaveoflife, obviously the $1.5b for 2013 Beats is an annual number, not a quarterly one. And of course the iPod numbers are presumably shrinking. That explains it.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - thedaveoflife 11y ago
      Beats had $1.5 Billion in annual revenue in 2013. Beats + Apple Watch were < $1b revenue in Q3 alone.
      - __APPL__ 11y ago
        "Other Products" also includes AppleTV which got HBONOW AND a price cut last quarter to boost sales
  - thoughtsimple 11y ago
    The CFO stated that the watch provided was more than 100% growth of revenue in the Other category. Also that the watch sold more than iPhone and iPad in the same initial 9 week period. So more than 3 million Apple watches compared against initial iPad sales.
  - MaysonL 11y ago
    Note that during the conference call they said that the watch represented more than 100% of the "Other Products" increase…
raldi 11y ago
I wouldn't say it makes it clear, but rather it's an early indicator of such. A lot of people are taking the "wait and see" approach to the watch, a lot of reviews said to wait for v2, and they don't really have their developer ecosystem in order yet. If the results still look like this in, say, October 2016, then I think we can say the conclusion is clear.
crgt 11y ago
Or that supply constraints remain (for now..) a limiting factor?
melling 11y ago
It's too early to tell but I think wearables will be huge. The Watch is only first generation so the benefits will increase. The first generation iPhone didn't have a camera, for example. The current Watch is a tethered device. Selling the health and safety benefits of a wearable shouldn't be too hard for Apple and Google.
- ethbro 11y ago
  I'm curious about this. Why? I think the best hindsight for successes was about enabling. - The iPod enabled you to take your music with you in a much more polished and convenient form factor (sorry, Rio). - The iPhone enabled you to have much more functional mobile experience (in a much more polished and convenient form factor... sorry, Blackberry). - The MacBook Pro... " - The Apple Watch enables you to... ... what? I'm honestly asking. You can't physically put a bigger screen on your wrist. No one has come up with a convenient input device for interacting with it. Sure, battery, processing power, and connectivity will improve as hardware does. But none of those change the basic proposition. What is the problem that it solves? Continuous health monitoring is helpful, but I think obesity statistics bear out how much people generally care about their own health. I can see an alternate past where the iPhone was instead a watch, and now we're all communicating via watches (albeit those first few generations would have been bracelets). But competing against an entrenched surfeit of cell phone screens? I just don't see it. (Side argument familiar to Tesla owners: also, now you have tech curve depreciation is what was formerly a more value-retaining object, if you're thinking of just using it as a watch)
  - toyg 11y ago
    > Continuous health monitoring is helpful, but I think obesity statistics bear out how much people generally care about their own health. You should have a look at the size of the fitness sector. We fatsos might care about our health intermittently, but we tend to periodically overspend desperately trying to catch up. If Apple can persuade me that the iWatch will make me lose weight all the time, I'm happy to hand them my life savings. I personally think the watch is pointless until it remains a dumb sensor hub (and it stays at a luxury price point), but being the central point for overall health monitoring is the killer spot for wearables. Sport, medical and insurance companies will be on it in seconds, followed by child-safety, elder care, entertainment, payment, the lot. Smartphones will look clumsy in comparison. (edit to answer your enabling question: if it becomes the focal point for continuous health monitoring, it enables me to know exactly what's going on in my body at all times without having to see a doctor and book exams.)
cgriswald 11y ago
I think it's too soon to make that call. I'm an early adopter of many Apple products, but find the watch very lacking. Even my ex-gf, who works at Apple, decided she wasn't going to get the watch. What's wrong with it? For starters, it's no-go for left-handed people. If you put the watch on your right hand, the controls are all on the arm side, rather than the hand side of the watch. On a normal watch that's not a big deal because you barely access the controls. The solution then is to turn the watch upside down, but then the controls are still awkward and since they made the strange decision not to center the control. One wonders why they went with "watch" controls at all. Second, it's not really a watch, is it? It's a lot more than a watch. A watch for me is mostly a fashion accessory. But these things are ugly. I find it very strange that Angela Ahrendts from Burberry is in charge of retail, but they didn't do what Burberry does... get watch companies to make the watches and then tack on their logo. I would love a Burberry type watch (despite my watchmaker friend telling me how much crap they are), which, by the way, has many interactive features with my iPhone. But what Apple offered was an ugly, clunky, underpowered second screen that I have to constantly charge. All that said, I think they might figure out how to make a good Apple Watch (as long as they don't treat it like they've treated the Apple TV, which IMHO, has gone backward with each version -- give me local storage!).
- cmyr 11y ago
  To offer a datapoint, I'm left handed and I wasn't aware I was supposed to have a problem.
- Brushfire 11y ago
  The left-hand, right-hand issue isnt really a thing. You can change the orientation of the display and bands such that it works for both left and right hands. The only difference is whether the crown is on the top right or bottom left, but it doesnt really affect usability (afaik).
  - cgriswald 11y ago
    It affected it for me. I've tried the watch on and its just not usable that way for me. Another poster says he prefers it that way. I find the choice of mimicking watch controls odd to begin with, and then to align them in a such a way that they provide a different experience for different users seems odder still.
Jerry2 11y ago
>This makes it clear that Apple Watch isn't the kind of category creator like iPhone, but rather like Apple TV. Clear as mud maybe. >The Apple Watch has sold more units in the first nine weeks following its launch than either the iPhone or iPad did at the same point after their respective releases, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said on Tuesday. [1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/21/apple-watch-sales-beat-iphone-ipad-through-9-weeks-cfo-luca-maestri-says http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/21/apple-watch-sales-...
- stock_toaster 11y ago
  It was also pretty heavily supply constrained during initial launch too.
- this_user 11y ago
  In the first week yes, but recent independent analysis[1] suggests, that sales dropped like a rock afterwards. Also, most sales were apparently for the cheaper sports version which is unlikely to be great news for Apple's margin in this category. So, while I believe the CFO told the truth, it may very well not be the whole story. [1] http://qz.com/410027/apple-watch-orders-fell-sharply-after-the-first-day-and-havent-grown-since-a-shopping-data-firm-says/ http://qz.com/410027/apple-watch-orders-fell-sharply-after-t...
  - cmsj 11y ago
    Analysis with a very poor sample set (a set of USA online buyers of unknown representativity, who happen to let some company read their emails). Even Slice themselves cautioned about extrapolating from their data.
  - mcphage 11y ago
    Tim Cook, on the call: > On the Watch, our June sales were higher than April or May. I realize that’s very different than some of what’s being written, but June sales were the highest. The Watch had a more of a back-ended kind of skewing.
MaysonL 11y ago
Yeah, it only sold about a billion dollars worth last quarter, barely two percent of Apple's revenues, if that. How much did Apple TV sell its first quarter? [quite a lot less]

This makes it clear that Apple Watch isn't the kind of category creator like iPhone, but rather like Apple TV.

by obblekk 11y ago

This makes it clear that Apple Watch isn't the kind of category creator like iPhone, but rather like Apple TV.

serve_yay 11y ago

How so?

jstsch 11y ago
Look in the data summary (PDF below). "Other Products" which includes the Apple Watch grew 'only' a billion year over year. http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy15datasum_2.pdf http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy15datasum_2.pdf
- aetherson 11y ago
  So I'm maybe missing something, but Other Products 2014 didn't include Beats headphones sales, right? Because the acquisition didn't happen until Aug 1, 2014? And Other Products 2015 explicitly does include Beats Electronics. And wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics) says that Beats revenue in 2013 was $1.5 billion. If all that is right -- and it may not be -- then that implies that Beats + Apple Watch < $1b revenue, which would indicate that something is very wrong. Indeed, it would imply that something is SO wrong that I doubt I have the facts above correct. EDIT: Duh, thanks thedaveoflife, obviously the $1.5b for 2013 Beats is an annual number, not a quarterly one. And of course the iPod numbers are presumably shrinking. That explains it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - thedaveoflife 11y ago
    Beats had $1.5 Billion in annual revenue in 2013. Beats + Apple Watch were < $1b revenue in Q3 alone.
    - __APPL__ 11y ago
      "Other Products" also includes AppleTV which got HBONOW AND a price cut last quarter to boost sales
- thoughtsimple 11y ago
  The CFO stated that the watch provided was more than 100% growth of revenue in the Other category. Also that the watch sold more than iPhone and iPad in the same initial 9 week period. So more than 3 million Apple watches compared against initial iPad sales.
- MaysonL 11y ago
  Note that during the conference call they said that the watch represented more than 100% of the "Other Products" increase…

raldi 11y ago

I wouldn't say it makes it clear, but rather it's an early indicator of such. A lot of people are taking the "wait and see" approach to the watch, a lot of reviews said to wait for v2, and they don't really have their developer ecosystem in order yet. If the results still look like this in, say, October 2016, then I think we can say the conclusion is clear.

crgt 11y ago

Or that supply constraints remain (for now..) a limiting factor?

melling 11y ago

It's too early to tell but I think wearables will be huge. The Watch is only first generation so the benefits will increase. The first generation iPhone didn't have a camera, for example. The current Watch is a tethered device. Selling the health and safety benefits of a wearable shouldn't be too hard for Apple and Google.

ethbro 11y ago
I'm curious about this. Why? I think the best hindsight for successes was about enabling. - The iPod enabled you to take your music with you in a much more polished and convenient form factor (sorry, Rio). - The iPhone enabled you to have much more functional mobile experience (in a much more polished and convenient form factor... sorry, Blackberry). - The MacBook Pro... " - The Apple Watch enables you to... ... what? I'm honestly asking. You can't physically put a bigger screen on your wrist. No one has come up with a convenient input device for interacting with it. Sure, battery, processing power, and connectivity will improve as hardware does. But none of those change the basic proposition. What is the problem that it solves? Continuous health monitoring is helpful, but I think obesity statistics bear out how much people generally care about their own health. I can see an alternate past where the iPhone was instead a watch, and now we're all communicating via watches (albeit those first few generations would have been bracelets). But competing against an entrenched surfeit of cell phone screens? I just don't see it. (Side argument familiar to Tesla owners: also, now you have tech curve depreciation is what was formerly a more value-retaining object, if you're thinking of just using it as a watch)
- toyg 11y ago
  > Continuous health monitoring is helpful, but I think obesity statistics bear out how much people generally care about their own health. You should have a look at the size of the fitness sector. We fatsos might care about our health intermittently, but we tend to periodically overspend desperately trying to catch up. If Apple can persuade me that the iWatch will make me lose weight all the time, I'm happy to hand them my life savings. I personally think the watch is pointless until it remains a dumb sensor hub (and it stays at a luxury price point), but being the central point for overall health monitoring is the killer spot for wearables. Sport, medical and insurance companies will be on it in seconds, followed by child-safety, elder care, entertainment, payment, the lot. Smartphones will look clumsy in comparison. (edit to answer your enabling question: if it becomes the focal point for continuous health monitoring, it enables me to know exactly what's going on in my body at all times without having to see a doctor and book exams.)

cgriswald 11y ago

I think it's too soon to make that call. I'm an early adopter of many Apple products, but find the watch very lacking. Even my ex-gf, who works at Apple, decided she wasn't going to get the watch. What's wrong with it? For starters, it's no-go for left-handed people. If you put the watch on your right hand, the controls are all on the arm side, rather than the hand side of the watch. On a normal watch that's not a big deal because you barely access the controls. The solution then is to turn the watch upside down, but then the controls are still awkward and since they made the strange decision not to center the control. One wonders why they went with "watch" controls at all. Second, it's not really a watch, is it? It's a lot more than a watch. A watch for me is mostly a fashion accessory. But these things are ugly. I find it very strange that Angela Ahrendts from Burberry is in charge of retail, but they didn't do what Burberry does... get watch companies to make the watches and then tack on their logo. I would love a Burberry type watch (despite my watchmaker friend telling me how much crap they are), which, by the way, has many interactive features with my iPhone. But what Apple offered was an ugly, clunky, underpowered second screen that I have to constantly charge. All that said, I think they might figure out how to make a good Apple Watch (as long as they don't treat it like they've treated the Apple TV, which IMHO, has gone backward with each version -- give me local storage!).

cmyr 11y ago
To offer a datapoint, I'm left handed and I wasn't aware I was supposed to have a problem.
Brushfire 11y ago
The left-hand, right-hand issue isnt really a thing. You can change the orientation of the display and bands such that it works for both left and right hands. The only difference is whether the crown is on the top right or bottom left, but it doesnt really affect usability (afaik).
- cgriswald 11y ago
  It affected it for me. I've tried the watch on and its just not usable that way for me. Another poster says he prefers it that way. I find the choice of mimicking watch controls odd to begin with, and then to align them in a such a way that they provide a different experience for different users seems odder still.

Jerry2 11y ago

>This makes it clear that Apple Watch isn't the kind of category creator like iPhone, but rather like Apple TV. Clear as mud maybe. >The Apple Watch has sold more units in the first nine weeks following its launch than either the iPhone or iPad did at the same point after their respective releases, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said on Tuesday. [1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/21/apple-watch-sales-beat-iphone-ipad-through-9-weeks-cfo-luca-maestri-says http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/21/apple-watch-sales-...

stock_toaster 11y ago
It was also pretty heavily supply constrained during initial launch too.
this_user 11y ago
In the first week yes, but recent independent analysis[1] suggests, that sales dropped like a rock afterwards. Also, most sales were apparently for the cheaper sports version which is unlikely to be great news for Apple's margin in this category. So, while I believe the CFO told the truth, it may very well not be the whole story. [1] http://qz.com/410027/apple-watch-orders-fell-sharply-after-the-first-day-and-havent-grown-since-a-shopping-data-firm-says/ http://qz.com/410027/apple-watch-orders-fell-sharply-after-t...
- cmsj 11y ago
  Analysis with a very poor sample set (a set of USA online buyers of unknown representativity, who happen to let some company read their emails). Even Slice themselves cautioned about extrapolating from their data.
- mcphage 11y ago
  Tim Cook, on the call: > On the Watch, our June sales were higher than April or May. I realize that’s very different than some of what’s being written, but June sales were the highest. The Watch had a more of a back-ended kind of skewing.

MaysonL 11y ago

Yeah, it only sold about a billion dollars worth last quarter, barely two percent of Apple's revenues, if that. How much did Apple TV sell its first quarter? [quite a lot less]