Sales figures of the Apple Watch have not been disclosed, which has been decided on by the company ever since the device launched in April this year. Apple has claimed that its line of smart watches has been trailing off because the demands are greater than the supply which the company sells. But numbers have not been divulged, and analysts are looking at the product as a flop.
Wallstreet has been said to put the estimated sales on 4 million units. The watch, according to Fortune, has sold an average of only 2.53 million units. The findings have been raised in a conference call with analysts on Tuesday, where Tim Cook, the company's CEO, has taken to defend the sales of the watches. Fortune has published a verbatim report based on the call transcript.
Mr. Cook began by addressing the issue of transparency, saying that the decision to withold the information on the sales was for competitors to know that the device is something the company "worked really hard on". The CEO then raised two points regarding the sales of the Apple Watch.
First, he stressed that looking only at the revenue will not provide a complete picture of how well the device performed. He said, "If you look at the other products category and look at the revenue in this category, it would not be an accurate thing to just look at the sequential change or the year over year change and assume that were the total Watch revenue because the aggregate balance of that category, both sequentially and year over year, is shrinking. Obviously iPod is a part of that, but there are other things in there, accessories and so forth, that are shrinking."
Second, Cook pointed out that the sales of the device did exceed the company's expectations. The supply of Apple Watches have supposedly been behind the demands for it. "And to give you a little additional insight, through the end of the quarter, in fact the Apple Watch sell-through was higher than the comparable launch periods of the original iPhone or the original iPad. And we were able to do that with having only 680 points of sale." The CEO added.
Tim Cook concluded that he is pleased with the overall performance of the device in the market. He also highlighted the watch's record-setting custormer satisfaction rate, which exceeded even that of the iPhone's. As a user of the device, Cook claims to not go anywhere without it because of its efficiency as a product.
