Posted on 04/17/2015 9:27:26 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Apple Watch. Seems like Apple has a hit on its corporate hands. Or a preorder hit. The company sold a million Apple Watches in the first 24 hours—just in the U.S.—according to one piece of analysis. That would make it the most successful new product category launch in Apple's history—so what do you do if you've been talking smack about it for months?
If you're Roger Kay, you stuff a straw man full of nonsensical numbers that will allow you to declare the device a failure no matter what. It's a neat trick so long as no one applies a gram of logic to what you're saying. Unfortunately for Mr. Kay's latest column at Forbes—Apple Watch Wager—I have plenty of logic lying around.
Mr. Kay's story starts off on Friday, when he reported that an informal poll of Silicon Valley tech execs found none of them intended to buy an Apple Watch. That led him to, "suspect that the watch will underperform from a sales perspective."
I suspect he is wrong.
Mr. Kay added:
The top press all got free demo watches, and they’re mostly positive about it, saying they have 'discovered' what makes the watch so special. But methinks the lady doth protest too much. If they had to pay for it, they would not likely have run out and bought one. And methinks the lady doth project too much.
The quote above was originally published on April 10th, the same day Apple Watch preorders went on sale and customers could make appointments to see them in Apple Stores. Here we are on Monday, April 13th, and Apple Watch is, as noted above, a smash hit. The debut device reached at least a million sales around the world in the first day. As HuffPo noted, it took 74 days for the iPhone to reach that number, and it took 28 days for iPad to do the same.
That puts quite the damper on the doom and gloom crowd's conviction that Apple Watch would finally be Apple's megaflop, its long overdue comeuppance after so many years of success.
Mr. Kay was challenged on his predictions of failure by readers who asked him to put his own predictions on the line, which he did on Monday. It's how he did so that has me tilting my knapsack off. From Mr. Kay's piece:
Rather than throw my hocus pocus on top of everybody else’s (after all, who actually knows something as intangible as likely demand for a product in a new(ish) category?), I took a look at the ranges that some other people have laid out and used them to set a 'stretch' goal for Apple: 50 million units in the first year. That’s pretty much the high end of today’s forecasts with a few million more units added on.
Here are the numbers he used:
In a Fortune survey done on March 2, 2015, financial analysts offered a range of predictions from
8 million to 41 million for the Apple Watch’s first-year sales
How to Shape Your Apple Watch Predictions to Suit Your Goals
Let's start with the fact that 50 million units isn't "pretty much the high end of today’s forecasts with a few million more units added on." It's a full 21.95 percent above the highest of the high end. It's also more than double the average of the analysts estimates he cited—122.5 percent of the average, for those keeping score at home.
And if Apple does this—sells more than 20 percent above the most enthusiastic predictions, and more than twice the consensus—then, and only then, will Mr. Kay magnanimously admit that he was wrong. From Mr. Kay:
Here’s what I’m going to do if Apple does manage to sell 50 million watches by April 24, 2016, a year from the starting ship date: I’ll get a T-shirt made that says, 'I ♥ Tim Cook' on the front and 'You were right. I was wrong' on the back. In large letters. Credit Ryan Wood, a personal trainer at my health club, for the actual wording. I will wear this shirt and have pictures taken, front and back, which I will post to Facebook’s Instagram with proper notification to my various distribution lists and social media along with a reminder of what this is all about for those who dump their own memory cache periodically to make room for the next crazy thing.
How generous!
I wrote a piece looking at the mental gymnastics required to be a member of the Church Apple Doom, but this takes the cake. Mr. Kay is setting the bar for Apple Watch success in fantasy land and couching that as reasonable so that no matter how well it does, he will still be able to label it a failure.
The funny thing is that I also have a bet running on Apple Watch with my friend Rocco Pendola. About a year ago I bet him that Apple would sell 40 million Apple Watches in the first full year of availability. I'm going to lose that bet. I was thinking in iPhone terms, not a new product category, and I was thinking about it as a fan of watches. I made a terrible bet, and I'm OK with that.
If Apple sells 2 million units in the first year, it would be a huge success compared to any other piece of wearable computing on the planet. Those kinds of numbers would make the device a blowout hit by any yardstick other than "Apple." At 5-10 million units, Apple will have a runaway success by any sane standard. Apple Watch sales above that will simply be stunning.
But don't look to Roger Kay to acknowledge such success.
Looks like Kevmo’s back touting the e-Cat....
hype by financials - no doubt they have shares in apple
apple people are the ones you saw sitting in the audience in the ‘1984’ commercial. don’t think so? walk into an apple store and loudly proclaim the mac you’re looking at is slower then your pc.
it’s like world war z meets invasion of the body snatchers
Where did you hear such a creepy thing. I charge my iPhone and my iPad when they need power. I have never heard of anyone "feeding" an iPhone. Patently absurd. You believing that is what I find creepy.
There already is one. . . and it isn't ruling the market. It hardly made a splash.
Interesting. The competition has already started.
Thanks.
How many do you think they have to produce for you to consider "mass producing," 86? Since Apple will be delivering more than 2.5 million on April 24, and no other maker of smart watches has ever produced anything more than a couple hundred thousand and sold them over the space of a year, that sure looks like mass production to any person not suffering from Apple Derangement Syndrome. Apple had stated they had already manufactured two million in the middle of March . . . and you really don't think they stopped making them then do you?
Apple had sold out their stock on hand for April 24th delivery in the first TEN MINUTES of going on pre-sale on April 10 at midnight Pacific Standard time. People kept ordering them and ordering them for DAYS afterward and are still ordering them today. No one except Apple knows exactly how many pre-orders have been made.
You keep pushing your claim that Apple is promoting the "queer agenda" when it is only the CEO who is promoting the queer agenda. . . Apple the company has merely joined Microsoft, HP, Google, FaceBook, the NBA, NASCAR, Walmart and now 60 other companies and organizations in giving lip service to the Gay Legislative agenda. . . and all of them except NASCAR have been doing it far longer than Apple has. . . and even put corporate funds and effort toward advocating that position. Microsoft has been backing it for ten years and Google even longer. . . yet YOU will ignore every one of their long term egregious conduct so that you can bash Apple for its much shorter term egregious conduct. . . because the news media focused on Apple. It gets more clicks and media attention. . . and its CEO is homosexual. It makes an easy target. . . and it makes you a hypocrite for being so selective in your bile.
Why aren't you also on the Microsoft threads claiming that Microsoft is promoting the queer agenda? After all, they've been doing it for ten years longer than Apple. . . (Sorry dayglored. . . )
It came out six months ago. . .
Yes, you're right. What with you throwing your feces around slurring me and other Apple users merely because we choose to use a computer and phone you hate. You need help.
Swordmaker's and Kathy's proposed diagnosis for the new IDC-10 addenda:
90210 iOS Munchausen's Apple-Plexy Syndrome (MAPS), The overwhelming compulsion to post negative, judgmental, aggressive, and false commentary on any website thread related to Apple products wherever found, including phobic reaction to projectedv Apple user euphoria. First and subsequent encounters.
This diagnosis applies to you and a couple of other deranged posters on this thread.
I agree Apple has a (very) formidable marketing operation.
Very formidable.
But I’m just saying. They need to make the Apple watch a stand-alone phone as well.
They already have competition.
Not that organized, not that big, but it has started. I say that as a potential customer.
Make the watch independent of the rest of Apple’s products. Compatible, sure, but allow customers to become Apple members with only a watch.
Just a watch.
I am not buying yet. But I very likely will make this move in a year or so.
Apple hasn’t (yet) won me over. I want to be an Apple user, with just a watch.
The competition hasn’t won me over yet either. It’s still pretty small, and still pretty preliminary, but it’s going to grow very quickly now.
Just saying. Win me over Apple.
US $44.00 / piece
Minimum order 10 pieces
From Shenzhen JOYSAVE Technology Co., Ltd., founded in 2013.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2014-Newest-Smart-Bluetooth-Watch-GV08_60136483283.html
“I carry a pocket watch. With analog hands.”
I’m with you on the analog hands. Tried the pocket watch thing. It isn’t me.
Which is why - the ONLY reason why - I can imagine any utility to the Apple Watch thing.
Who is old enough to be able to afford it, and still has eyesight acute enough to be able to read it??
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