Teens 'tepid' on Apple Watch as iPhone and iPad steal Android marketshare

The investment firm's Fall 2014 Teen Survey shows Apple is still a hot brand for America's youth, but the company's first foray into the smartwatch market is not generating the hype enjoyed by other portable products like the iPhone and iPad.

As noted by analyst Gene Munster, 16 percent of a sampling of about 7,200 teens said they were interested in "buying an iWatch for $350" when it debuts sometime next year, down from 17 percent in spring. The Apple Watch was subsequently announced in early September with a starting price of $349. Only 7 percent of teens owned a smartwatch at the time the survey was taken, up one percent from spring.

"We believe that despite the timing of the survey, speculation has ramped significantly around an Apple Watch since the Spring and we would have expected to see at least a small uptick in interest from teens in the watch," Munster writes.

The analyst is sticking to a previous sales estimate of 10 million combined Apple Watch units for the 2015 calendar year.

As for the iPhone, Munster's fall survey showed 67 percent of teens owned Apple's handset, up from 61 percent in spring, and 73 percent said they expect to buy one as their next smartphone. Further, iPhone appears to be stealing marketshare from Android, which dropped five points over the same period.

Finally, the iPad also showed consistent demand over the past few months, with 66 percent of tablet-owning teens saying they owned Apple's tablet, identical to the spring survey. Of teens expecting to buy a tablet in the next six months, 60 percent are looking at an iPad Air or iPad mini.

Interestingly, Microsoft's Surface — included for the first time in Piper Jaffray's survey— took 10 percent of the market, with 19 percent of prospective tablet buyers expecting to pick up the hybrid device within the next six months. Munster guesses that enhanced productivity features may be driving interest in Microsoft's tablet.