Apple Watch shipped 2.2M units in March quarter, but lost marketshare, estimates claim

Posted:
in Apple Watch edited April 2016
Apple shipped about 2.2 million Apple Watches in the March quarter, although it still saw its share of the smartwatch market slip to 52.4 percent, according to research estimates published on Thursday.




In the December quarter, the company controlled 63 percent of the market with 5.1 million units, Strategy Analytics said. The dip comes on top of an expected seasonal decline in industry shipments, which fell from 8.1 million during the holidays to 4.2 million.

Strategy Analytics explained the shift in market control by pointing to rising competition from Motorola, LG, and others, even if Apple still holds a commanding lead. Samsung -- Apple's biggest individual rival in the smartwatch space -- actually saw its share decline as well, sliding from 16 percent (1.3 million units) in the December quarter to 14.3 percent, or just 600,000 units.

Apple has yet to publish any official sales data for the Watch, leaving researchers to calculate their own numbers based on sources like retail traffic and segment revenue.

During the company's quarterly results call, CEO Tim Cook would only say that Watch sales met Apple's expectations in the March quarter, and that he expects the device to follow seasonal patterns akin to iPods. He also repeated a claim that the Watch sold more units in its first year than the iPhone did in its own. The Watch, however, has had the benefit of wider distribution, and a radically different market for "smart" products than that of 2007.

A director at Strategy Analytics, Cliff Raskind, argued that the "honeymoon for version 1 of the Apple Watch is over," and that the success of a second-generation model will be linked to offering better apps, plus features like cellular connections and improved battery life.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 28
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Because the chicken bones said so? Or the dart board? Or the Tarot cards?
    EsquireCatstdknoxnetmage
  • Reply 2 of 28
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    lkrupp said:
    Because the chicken bones said so? Or the dart board? Or the Tarot cards?
    "Supply Chain checks" aka we have no fucking idea, but have to publish something.
    cornchipSpamSandwichtdknoxsteveh
  • Reply 3 of 28
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    Not surprising, since there's some shitty smartwatch being released every 5 seconds. 

    Maybe Apple should make all their products free, certainly that would please the Marketshare Worshippers. I mean, they'd go out of business in short order, but who gives a fuck? MARKETSHARE!
    nolamacguycalicornchiptdknoxnetmage
  • Reply 4 of 28
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    This is hilarious. As far as I know not one company has announced smartwatch sales. How can we know that Apple has lost share and we don't know how many smartwatches have been sold overall and how many were Watch specifically?
    cornchiptdknoxbadmonk
  • Reply 5 of 28
    icoco3icoco3 Posts: 1,474member
    Apple shipped about 2.2 million Apple Watches in the March quarter, although it still saw its share of the smartwatch market slip to 52.4 percent, according to research estimates published on Thursday.
    ...
    You mean after just 1 year on the market, this single smart watch has 52.4% of the market????  I am confused where the problem is here????
    calicornchiptdknoxbadmonknetmage
  • Reply 6 of 28
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    The Apple Watch is outselling every other smartwatch COMBINED, even though it REQUIRES an iPhone and starts at like $400. 

    What a failure. 
    edited April 2016 calicornchiptdknoxSEngineerbadmonknetmage
  • Reply 7 of 28
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    Apple has a product that has been out barely a year and it still has over half the marketshare?  And somehow this is bad?

    And WTF is true marketshare when none of the other competitors have put out any sales figures?
    calicornchiptdknoxbadmonknetmage
  • Reply 8 of 28
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    Well it's because these guys probably add white-box watches and toy watches to the numbers to push its agenda. 
    badmonk
  • Reply 9 of 28
    dacloodacloo Posts: 890member
    A smart watch is nice for people who play sports or want to be nagged with push notifications all the time, even when they've put their phone away.
    The use case for this product is so limited at this point that I wouldn't be surprised to see the entire market shrinking now the novelty factor wore off.


  • Reply 10 of 28
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    sog35 said:
    okay. Watch sales have been good.  

    But I'll admit it is not a must have product. I own an AppleWatch. I wear it every day. I like it.  Just like I like my shoes. But I don't love it. It does not appeal like how the iPod, iPhone, iPad did when it first came out.

    I think its time to fire Tim Cook. We need a new CEO at Apple to make some tough decisions. If not Apple will just slowly rot away. It will still make a ton of money the next 10 years but it will not be the Apple of 2007-2015.  Some of the changes that need to be made, I know Cook won't do.

    1. Shake up the executive team. Eddy Cue needs to be fired or reassigned. He has not done a good job at all in building out the cloud, AppleMusic, or live TV package. I even think Ive needs to be fired or another designer needs to step in with equal power. Apple designs have become boring and predictable. We need fresh blood in the design team. I'm sorry but making everything thinner and painting it gold is not good enough. 

    2. Change pricing strategy. No more selling piece of shit base models. No more 16GB iPhones/iPads.  No more iMacs with crappy harddrives and bare minimum RAM. Yes this will cut into profits in the short term. But long term you will gain more money and more loyal customers. Give them quality and they will keep coming back.

    3. Stop the S cycle. No more sticking with the same iPhone design for 2 years. The market moves to fast. Its a total embarssement that a company like Huawei can update its phones every year and Apple can't.  Its a total FARCE that cheap POS companies like Xiaomi can offer $200 phones with OLED screens and Apple can't with $1000 phone. Pathetic. 

    4. Stop bending over to Wall Street. Stop with the detailed reporting of iPhone units. No more detailed information. Just total hardware, software, and services.  That's it. Also no more guidance. Follow what Google does. The more information you give Wall STreet the more crap they will have to manipulate. Also stop trying to please Wall STreet with a dividend and buyback. Those have not helped AT ALL.  Stop those immediately. And give Wall Street a big finger. Use that money to grow the company, buy new companies, and invest in Cloud centers ect. 

    5. Make it 100% clear that you will be transitioning to a services company in the next 10 years. Make your vision clear. That by 2025 Apple will have more revenue from software/services than hardware. That must be spoken crystal clear. No more going half way bullshit. No more saying you are going to be a software/services company but still put such a huge emphasis on units sold. STOP.  Stop reporting units and maybe Wall Street will believe you. Start dividing iPhone/iPad/Mac/Watch revenue to software and hardware portions. iOS has massive value. That should show up. Each iOS device should show $200-$400 of software revenue.  And spread that over 2 years.  Start buying some major services companies. Stop being such a jerk with negotiating for a TV package (hell Dish and even Sony figured out a way to get a live TV package) get going and stop trying to squeeze out every single cent of profit. Build your cloud aggressively.  

    6. Stop being so political. Stop being involved in social issues.  Just stop. This isn't the time or place. Business is about making money. People are sick of Cook making a big deal about gay rights, green, and equality. JUST STOP.  Apple needs to get off its high horse and get into the advertising business. Apple has 1 billion of most valuable users yet it refuses to advertise to them. PATHETIC. What a lost opportunity.  Google/Facebook only do adversting and they are worth $800 billion combined. Apple needs to stop being holier than THOU and start using the user base as an adverstising base. Hell most Apple users use Google anyway. This one opportunity alone is worth over $300 billion.
    I see the meds wore off again. better get that prescription filled. 

    FYI, I love that cook and Apple stand for civil rights like equality and privacy. 
    singularitycalicornchiptdknoxnetmage
  • Reply 11 of 28
    Who cares about marketshare?

    It is about the money.

    2.2 million Apple Watches is about $1.1 BILLION in revenue.


    cornchiptdknox
  • Reply 12 of 28
    Apple raked in $6 BILLION last year from the Apple Watch. This is more than Rolex's $5 BILLION.  So who is the failure again?
    calicornchiptdknox
  • Reply 13 of 28
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member

    In the December quarter, the company controlled 63 percent of the market with 5.1 million units...

    Not bad at all. 
    cornchiptdknoxbadmonk
  • Reply 14 of 28
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    Lost marketshare to what exactly? A lot of innuendo in this article, estimates from what, other companie's watch number are even more buried in their financials than Apples.
    This is  like every single clickbait article with Apple in the title.
    Another witless article essentially.

    Considering the Watch is nearly a year old and supposedly close to a refreshs (says rumors); lower sales are expected.
    Just like the Iphone always "lost shares" during the late spring to summer for 5 years (except for 2015 when Samsung S6 had crap sales).
    So, I guess Apple must have had a very bad 2007-2014 period by that measure.

    They're selling 2.2 M just before a refresh... Boohoohoo.... That's what 14M for first 10 months....  (they really only sold volume in May and did not have full distribution and countries until October). Well, I'm sure Apple is crying a river.

    edited April 2016 calicornchiptdknoxbadmonk
  • Reply 15 of 28
    icoco3 said:
    Apple shipped about 2.2 million Apple Watches in the March quarter, although it still saw its share of the smartwatch market slip to 52.4 percent, according to research estimates published on Thursday.
    ...
    You mean after just 1 year on the market, this single smart watch has 52.4% of the market????  I am confused where the problem is here????
    It lost marketshare. After starting with zero percent marketshare one year ago. Apparently it makes more sense to compare one quarter to the last as opposed to the same quarter YoY.
    tdknoxstevehbadmonk
  • Reply 16 of 28
    Now "Estimates" are making their own claims...
    cornchiptdknox
  • Reply 17 of 28
    sog35 said:
    okay. Watch sales have been good.  

    But I'll admit it is not a must have product. I own an AppleWatch. I wear it every day. I like it.  Just like I like my shoes. But I don't love it. It does not appeal like how the iPod, iPhone, iPad did when it first came out.

    I think its time to fire Tim Cook. We need a new CEO at Apple to make some tough decisions. If not Apple will just slowly rot away.
    Very hard to take you seriously when you spend half your rant telling Apple what to do to improve their hardware offering then say they need to transition to services. Nothing wrong with selling services but Apple is a vertical company that is firmly built on their hardware offering. No software/service focused company is going to put the kind of points on the board each quarter that Apple is now. Microsoft can't do it, nor can Google do it and those companies are supposedly better at services than Apple. Services are great to smooth out uneven market trends in hardware sales but for Apple they have to be driven by hardware sales even if hardware profits are falling. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for expanding and improving their services, I just don't think then need to be the company's number 1 priority.

    Your whole rant sounds like a Micheal Dell "Sell the company and give the money back to the shareholders" speech because you don't have the vision to see how the company moves forward because you don't understand what the company does, what it can do or what it is working on. Nobody in the know is advocating firing Tim Cook. He has sold more products and put more money in Apple's coffers in the last 5 years than Jobs did in both of his terms at the company.
    edited April 2016 badmonknetmage
  • Reply 18 of 28
    EsquireCatsEsquireCats Posts: 1,268member
    dacloo said:
    A smart watch is nice for people who play sports or want to be nagged with push notifications all the time, even when they've put their phone away.
    The use case for this product is so limited at this point that I wouldn't be surprised to see the entire market shrinking now the novelty factor wore off.


    It's entirely evident that you have absolutely no idea why miniaturising smart phone capabilities to the wrist is a good idea. Your argument is so tenuous that it's comical: "nagged with push notifications", only for people who "play sports". It's one thing to identify that a product isn't for you, it's another to be so naive to assume that your personal views are representative of the market. Now, excuse me while I flip out my pocket watch to read the time.
    netmage
  • Reply 19 of 28
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,273member
    dacloo said:
    A smart watch is nice for people who play sports or want to be nagged with push notifications all the time, even when they've put their phone away.
    The use case for this product is so limited at this point that I wouldn't be surprised to see the entire market shrinking now the novelty factor wore off.


    Very, very clearly, you are a person with a closed mind who has not even tried on, let alone used, an Apple Watch.
    netmage
  • Reply 20 of 28
    Apple raked in $6 BILLION last year from the Apple Watch. This is more than Rolex's $5 BILLION.  So who is the failure again?
    Apple.  Rolex sold far fewer watches and let's be honest the Apple Watch for the foreseeable future has peaked.  The only ones who will buy an Apple Watch first and foremost are obviously iphone users so right there the market is very limited. And secondly and more importantly whoever wanted an Apple Watch more than likely will have one already.  I highly doubt there is any pent up demand for such a purchase.
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