steffen jobs, be careful to compare apples with apples (joke). Kuo of KGI Securities predicted that Apple Watch sales would be 15 million by the end of Apple's fiscal year on September 30, 2015. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty predicts that Apple Watch sales will be circa 36 million units for the device's first 12 months of availability, meaning by April 24, 2016. The two predications are not in conflict with each other.
You mean Apple has sold 700 million iPhones.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">Likely, most to those were repeat buyer</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">..</span>
Of the 4 iPhones I have bought, 3 of them are still in use (2 with family members) and I know others who also pass on their iPhones to family/friends, so repeat buyers does not necessarily mean that a good percentage of the 700m sold are not in use. How many of those are 4s's or older however, I don't know.
I'm not so sure about that. Around the iphone 4 or 4S they mentioned a high percentage of first time purchasers. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. It means they draw new people to their base. I'm more skeptical as to what they'll do with the watch. I've mentioned it before, but it doesn't bring the same level of consolidation as we had with the iphone, especially the 2nd generation and on.
The 70M iPhones apple sold in Q4 last year was, according to cook in the "low teens" of the installed base. Assuming within 1% of 15% is mid teen the highest "low teen" would be 13%. That gives an install base of well above 500M. Since then a lot of buyers of the new 6 series have been switchers, and since there are few switchers the other way I would say it's trending towards 600M.
OH NO! Time to buy apple stock and get my apple stuff from the trash after yesterday's 15 mil disappointment.
Seriously, apple has sold more smart watches in a month then the entire industry combine has in years. Can't people be satisfied with that? Dumb ass wallstreet. For real give apple a break!
Where I live, we wish Apple Watch will be launched soon as we want 5 for the family. And there are 6 of us holding iPhones - iPhones 5S (x2), iPhone 6 (x1) and iPhone 6P (x3).
You mean Apple has sold 700 million iPhones.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">Likely, most to those were repeat buyer</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">..</span>
Apple has reported sales of 726 million phones and 455 million of those phones since the launch quarter of the iPhone 5. I guess 80% of the iPhone 5 year was iPhone 5s and still in use, 90% of iPhone 5s year and 100% of the 2 quarters of the iPhone 6 year and I get 408 million iPhones capable of working with the Apple Watch.
When the iPhone 5 launched there were 41 million U.S. iPhone users, when the iPhone 5s launched there were 60 million U.S. iPhone users, and 72.5 million U.S. iPhone users when the iPhone 6 launched. Pretty steady U.S. growth of iPhone users.
Two analysts look at AppleWatch trends and give totally opposite projections. Who knows which one to believe?
Believe which ever one fits your bias. Go to any financial website and read articles about any company on the planet and you’ll find the same opposite opinions. For every Armageddon there’s a Utopia analyst. So if you don’t like Apple or the ?Watch then believe the negative articles. You will feel better and not alone. If you like Apple and the ?Watch then believe the Morgan Stanley analyst. You will feel better too. This bias can be seen in this thread. You know what, it doesn’t matter what analysts say. Human beings have always thought they can predict the future by analyzing data. It used to be throwing chicken bones in the air and ‘analyzing’ their positions when they hit the ground. Today it’s algorithms and charts. Same thing.
When the actual sales figures are released we will know, not before then.
Apple has 700 million iPhone customers. 36 million is pittance.
If my hunch is correct, iPhone 6 plus users will be the Watch's biggest target audience followed by road warriors and fitness buffs. IMO the more germane figure is what % of iPhone customers have iP 6 pluses?
Katy is one of the worst Apple analysts of all time, total idiot - I'm pretty sure that she was bearish when Apple hit bottom in the spring of 2009. Ming must be new because he/she isn't on the list from 2013 or 2015 either.
steffen jobs, be careful to compare apples with apples (joke). Kuo of KGI Securities predicted that Apple Watch sales would be 15 million by the end of Apple's fiscal year on September 30, 2015. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty predicts that Apple Watch sales will be circa 36 million units for the device's first 12 months of availability, meaning by April 24, 2016. The two predications are not in conflict with each other.
I concur. 15 millions in 5 months (April 24 - September 30) is 3 millions/month (Kuo); 36 millions in 12 months is also 3 millions/month (Huberty). Identical amounts.
How can W Street and Kuo expect Apple to sell more than 3 millions Watches per month, I cannot explain...
Don't get me wrong, I love my Apple Watch. But 36mm in first year seems high to me. Out of around 40 colleagues (> $200K salary) that have iPhone, 3 Apple Watches so far.
Yes, but how many of those 40 have "intent to purchase" and might have already done so if not for the super-duper long wait times related to the significant supply constraints? You can't just extrapolate from the 3 out of 40 under these early conditions.
Note that we would only need about 7 out of 40 to equate to Huberty's assumed percentage. Maybe 4 more of your colleagues would be "sporting" those watches right now if the wait times weren't so long. Maybe some have already ordered but are waiting and/or would have already ordered if not for the long estimated wait.
I concur. 15 millions in 5 months (April 24 - September 30) is 3 millions/month (Kuo); 36 millions in 12 months is also 3 millions/month (Huberty). Identical amounts.
How can W Street and Kuo expect Apple to sell more than 3 millions Watches per month, I cannot explain...
Robbie
True about the rates being equal, but this surprises me a little bit. Considering that Huberty seemed to base her conclusions off of data that indicates increasing demand as well as the fact that her time frame includes holiday seasons in the West as well as the Far East, I would have expected her average monthly rate to be higher than Kuo's. Perhaps she has a dimmer view of shipments in the early months due to the supply constraints. It would be interesting to see their assumptions with regard to both demand and supply.
Interesting note: Huberty's method is predicated on measurements of demand, while Kuo's is predicated on measurements of supply (or more precisely, supply chain vendor info). But both must make assumptions about whichever parts of the equation that they don't measure.
7.5% of 500 Million AppleID accounts (a 2013 number) would be... 37.5 Million.
Good at Math, bad at logic. Keep in mind that you can throw out your Apple ID count for MANY reasons: 1. Many people have multiple Apple IDs and I doubt Apple disables/deletes Apple IDs that go unused for years, so those are out. 2. Having an Apple ID doesn't mean you have an iPhone. AND 3. Having an Apple ID and an iPhone doesn't mean you have a iPhone 5 or higher (required to use the watch).
I have a well-founded suspicion that there is some well-connected financial relationship between Kuo and AI.
If I recall correctly, Ming-Chi Kuo made a series of predictions one year about what the new Apple devices would be like when they were announced in the fall, and he nailed just about every detail. He used his connections in the supply chain to come up with his accurate predictions. He still has those connections, but his predictions have underwhelmed since that one successful event. Perhaps Apple identified those weaknesses and started leaking a bit of misinformation.
Apparently in the analyst industry, where so few people ever do anything worth mentioning, once someone does something excellent (s)he doesn't really have to do anything else of note for quite some time. If you do it once, you're in the upper echelon, and there you will stay virtually forever until you are supplanted by someone else. It may take a while with these turkeys.
So Ming-Chi Kuo is now apparently notorious, and the words "well-connected" have followed his name in many forums, not just AI.
Why is Ming Chi "well connected" and yet Huberty is not?
Does Katy Huberty live in Taipei, Taiwan? Does she have a Chinese name? Does she speak Mandarin with Taiwan dialect? Is she a hardware oriented person? Has she got contacts in the Taiwan/Mainland/rest-of-Asia supply chain? Etc.
Aw, c'mon. Kuo of KGI Securities just predicted today that AppleWatch sales would be way down due to DECREASED demand. He said Apple would be lucky to sell 15 million AppleWatches this year and that would be considered greatly missed expectations and a disappointment to Wall Street investors. These are the things I don't understand. Two analysts look at AppleWatch trends and give totally opposite projections. Who knows which one to believe? I'll just go with Tim Cook's assessment that AppleWatch will have good sales although I don't recall him giving any sales numbers. I'd think if Apple sold only 15 million AppleWatches this year, it would be considered a successful launch, but that's just the way I see it. I'm simply not as greedy as those big Wall Street investor pricks are. Anyway, I feel that only Apple can decide what sales numbers are good because they're the only ones who could have an idea of demand of a completely new product. These jackass pundits wouldn't know a damn thing about Apple's sales goals.
Look, I think expectations have become completely absurd. Consumer electronics used to take a year to sell just one million units. It took DVD 21 months to sell one-million units. CD players took 28 months as did MP3 players. DVRs took 53 months. VCRs took 58 months. It took cable TV 144 months before one million people subscribed. The first iPad did it in 28 days which completely changed our perception of what constitutes success.
Let's take the lower end of the estimates - Apple sells 15 million watches this year. At an average price of $500, that's $7.5 billion. And people are ready to call that failure? It's become completely ridiculous. And let's not forget that since you need an iPhone to use the Apple Watch, the watch will drive some measure of iPhone sales as well. $7.5 billion is more than the revenue of many small nations. And if everyone who wanted the watch bought one this year, then there'd be declining sales next year - since the watches aren't subsidized, people are not going to replace them every year or even every other year.
There are some very decent companies who would kill for $7.5 billion in sales for their entire company, never mind just one product line.
Why? They start at $350 and there's no service contract. That's a pretty cheap Apple gadget: no trophy for the >$200k wrist to flash at the club....
Indeed. Both my wife and I make ~$40,000 annually (Canadian) and we are both excited for the delivery of each of our ? Watches. The Sport model is not priced so highly as to be completely out of our respective affordable ranges. We allow ourselves one expensive toy a year, and we decided on these wonderful devices this time around. They can't get here soon enough!
If my hunch is correct, iPhone 6 plus users will be the Watch's biggest target audience followed by road warriors and fitness buffs. IMO the more germane figure is what % of iPhone customers have iP 6 pluses?
The Watch adds more utility to a 5 series: Apple Pay for one so I see the Watch being attractive to more than simply 6 Plus owners.
Comments
Of the 4 iPhones I have bought, 3 of them are still in use (2 with family members) and I know others who also pass on their iPhones to family/friends, so repeat buyers does not necessarily mean that a good percentage of the 700m sold are not in use. How many of those are 4s's or older however, I don't know.
You mean Apple has sold 700 million iPhones.
Likely, most to those were repeat buyer..
I'm not so sure about that. Around the iphone 4 or 4S they mentioned a high percentage of first time purchasers. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. It means they draw new people to their base. I'm more skeptical as to what they'll do with the watch. I've mentioned it before, but it doesn't bring the same level of consolidation as we had with the iphone, especially the 2nd generation and on.
Seriously, apple has sold more smart watches in a month then the entire industry combine has in years. Can't people be satisfied with that? Dumb ass wallstreet. For real give apple a break!
I have asked this question for years.....
I have a well-founded suspicion that there is some well-connected financial relationship between Kuo and AI.
Apple has reported sales of 726 million phones and 455 million of those phones since the launch quarter of the iPhone 5. I guess 80% of the iPhone 5 year was iPhone 5s and still in use, 90% of iPhone 5s year and 100% of the 2 quarters of the iPhone 6 year and I get 408 million iPhones capable of working with the Apple Watch.
When the iPhone 5 launched there were 41 million U.S. iPhone users, when the iPhone 5s launched there were 60 million U.S. iPhone users, and 72.5 million U.S. iPhone users when the iPhone 6 launched. Pretty steady U.S. growth of iPhone users.
Two analysts look at AppleWatch trends and give totally opposite projections. Who knows which one to believe?
Believe which ever one fits your bias. Go to any financial website and read articles about any company on the planet and you’ll find the same opposite opinions. For every Armageddon there’s a Utopia analyst. So if you don’t like Apple or the ?Watch then believe the negative articles. You will feel better and not alone. If you like Apple and the ?Watch then believe the Morgan Stanley analyst. You will feel better too. This bias can be seen in this thread. You know what, it doesn’t matter what analysts say. Human beings have always thought they can predict the future by analyzing data. It used to be throwing chicken bones in the air and ‘analyzing’ their positions when they hit the ground. Today it’s algorithms and charts. Same thing.
When the actual sales figures are released we will know, not before then.
Apple has 700 million iPhone customers. 36 million is pittance.
If my hunch is correct, iPhone 6 plus users will be the Watch's biggest target audience followed by road warriors and fitness buffs. IMO the more germane figure is what % of iPhone customers have iP 6 pluses?
Why is Ming Chi "well connected" and yet Huberty is not?
http://fortune.com/2013/02/17/the-best-and-worst-apple-analysts-nine-quarter-edition/
http://fortune.com/2015/04/28/best-and-worst-apple-analysts-blockbuster-q2-edition/
Katy is one of the worst Apple analysts of all time, total idiot - I'm pretty sure that she was bearish when Apple hit bottom in the spring of 2009. Ming must be new because he/she isn't on the list from 2013 or 2015 either.
steffen jobs, be careful to compare apples with apples (joke). Kuo of KGI Securities predicted that Apple Watch sales would be 15 million by the end of Apple's fiscal year on September 30, 2015. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty predicts that Apple Watch sales will be circa 36 million units for the device's first 12 months of availability, meaning by April 24, 2016. The two predications are not in conflict with each other.
I concur. 15 millions in 5 months (April 24 - September 30) is 3 millions/month (Kuo); 36 millions in 12 months is also 3 millions/month (Huberty). Identical amounts.
How can W Street and Kuo expect Apple to sell more than 3 millions Watches per month, I cannot explain...
Robbie
Don't get me wrong, I love my Apple Watch. But 36mm in first year seems high to me. Out of around 40 colleagues (> $200K salary) that have iPhone, 3 Apple Watches so far.
Yes, but how many of those 40 have "intent to purchase" and might have already done so if not for the super-duper long wait times related to the significant supply constraints? You can't just extrapolate from the 3 out of 40 under these early conditions.
Note that we would only need about 7 out of 40 to equate to Huberty's assumed percentage. Maybe 4 more of your colleagues would be "sporting" those watches right now if the wait times weren't so long. Maybe some have already ordered but are waiting and/or would have already ordered if not for the long estimated wait.
Thompson
I concur. 15 millions in 5 months (April 24 - September 30) is 3 millions/month (Kuo); 36 millions in 12 months is also 3 millions/month (Huberty). Identical amounts.
How can W Street and Kuo expect Apple to sell more than 3 millions Watches per month, I cannot explain...
Robbie
True about the rates being equal, but this surprises me a little bit. Considering that Huberty seemed to base her conclusions off of data that indicates increasing demand as well as the fact that her time frame includes holiday seasons in the West as well as the Far East, I would have expected her average monthly rate to be higher than Kuo's. Perhaps she has a dimmer view of shipments in the early months due to the supply constraints. It would be interesting to see their assumptions with regard to both demand and supply.
Interesting note: Huberty's method is predicated on measurements of demand, while Kuo's is predicated on measurements of supply (or more precisely, supply chain vendor info). But both must make assumptions about whichever parts of the equation that they don't measure.
Thompson
40 user sample
3 watch users
7.5%
7.5% of 500 Million AppleID accounts (a 2013 number) would be... 37.5 Million.
Good at Math, bad at logic. Keep in mind that you can throw out your Apple ID count for MANY reasons:
1. Many people have multiple Apple IDs and I doubt Apple disables/deletes Apple IDs that go unused for years, so those are out.
2. Having an Apple ID doesn't mean you have an iPhone. AND
3. Having an Apple ID and an iPhone doesn't mean you have a iPhone 5 or higher (required to use the watch).
I have asked this question for years.....
I have a well-founded suspicion that there is some well-connected financial relationship between Kuo and AI.
If I recall correctly, Ming-Chi Kuo made a series of predictions one year about what the new Apple devices would be like when they were announced in the fall, and he nailed just about every detail. He used his connections in the supply chain to come up with his accurate predictions. He still has those connections, but his predictions have underwhelmed since that one successful event. Perhaps Apple identified those weaknesses and started leaking a bit of misinformation.
Apparently in the analyst industry, where so few people ever do anything worth mentioning, once someone does something excellent (s)he doesn't really have to do anything else of note for quite some time. If you do it once, you're in the upper echelon, and there you will stay virtually forever until you are supplanted by someone else. It may take a while with these turkeys.
So Ming-Chi Kuo is now apparently notorious, and the words "well-connected" have followed his name in many forums, not just AI.
Thompson
Does Katy Huberty live in Taipei, Taiwan? Does she have a Chinese name? Does she speak Mandarin with Taiwan dialect? Is she a hardware oriented person? Has she got contacts in the Taiwan/Mainland/rest-of-Asia supply chain? Etc.
Aw, c'mon. Kuo of KGI Securities just predicted today that AppleWatch sales would be way down due to DECREASED demand. He said Apple would be lucky to sell 15 million AppleWatches this year and that would be considered greatly missed expectations and a disappointment to Wall Street investors. These are the things I don't understand. Two analysts look at AppleWatch trends and give totally opposite projections. Who knows which one to believe? I'll just go with Tim Cook's assessment that AppleWatch will have good sales although I don't recall him giving any sales numbers. I'd think if Apple sold only 15 million AppleWatches this year, it would be considered a successful launch, but that's just the way I see it. I'm simply not as greedy as those big Wall Street investor pricks are. Anyway, I feel that only Apple can decide what sales numbers are good because they're the only ones who could have an idea of demand of a completely new product. These jackass pundits wouldn't know a damn thing about Apple's sales goals.
Look, I think expectations have become completely absurd. Consumer electronics used to take a year to sell just one million units. It took DVD 21 months to sell one-million units. CD players took 28 months as did MP3 players. DVRs took 53 months. VCRs took 58 months. It took cable TV 144 months before one million people subscribed. The first iPad did it in 28 days which completely changed our perception of what constitutes success.
Let's take the lower end of the estimates - Apple sells 15 million watches this year. At an average price of $500, that's $7.5 billion. And people are ready to call that failure? It's become completely ridiculous. And let's not forget that since you need an iPhone to use the Apple Watch, the watch will drive some measure of iPhone sales as well. $7.5 billion is more than the revenue of many small nations. And if everyone who wanted the watch bought one this year, then there'd be declining sales next year - since the watches aren't subsidized, people are not going to replace them every year or even every other year.
There are some very decent companies who would kill for $7.5 billion in sales for their entire company, never mind just one product line.
Indeed. Both my wife and I make ~$40,000 annually (Canadian) and we are both excited for the delivery of each of our ? Watches. The Sport model is not priced so highly as to be completely out of our respective affordable ranges. We allow ourselves one expensive toy a year, and we decided on these wonderful devices this time around. They can't get here soon enough!
If my hunch is correct, iPhone 6 plus users will be the Watch's biggest target audience followed by road warriors and fitness buffs. IMO the more germane figure is what % of iPhone customers have iP 6 pluses?
The Watch adds more utility to a 5 series: Apple Pay for one so I see the Watch being attractive to more than simply 6 Plus owners.