Why is Apple Silent About Smartwatch Sales?
While Apple is in no danger of going broke in the near future, the excitement that the tech giant was capable of arousing just a few years ago isn’t there anymore. Back in the glory days of Steve Jobs the company’s PR department was quick to pump out press releases touting the huge sales of the latest Apple product release.
Those days are clearly over since the long-awaited Apple Watch has been on sale for several months now but there has been no news about exactly how many units of the smartwatch have actually been sold. The explanation that Apple CEO Tim Cook gave for the failure to report the sales figures for the device is weak at best: “That was not a matter of not being transparent, it was a matter of not giving our competition insight that’s a product that we’ve worked really hard on.”
This excuse seems specious given how eager Apple was to brag about the early sales of the iPhone and iPad, two other products that the company presumably also worked very hard on. Although Cook has claimed, “the Apple Watch sell-through was higher than the comparable launch periods of the original iPhone or the original iPad,” it’s hard to tell whether he’s indulging in hyperbole without having the actual figures.
Apple currently depends on its flagship product the iPhone for 63.2% of its sales, a number helped by an 87% increase in unit sales in China. On the other hand, sales of the iPad have dropped 23% in the last quarter, so Apple needs for the Apple Watch to generate enough sales to balance the flagging interest in the tablet.
To retain its bragging rights in the tech world, Apple needs a new product that will be as indispensible to users as the iPhone but at least for now, the Apple Watch doesn’t seem to be that life-changing product. Maybe that’s why Apple has been so quiet lately.
