Neil Hughes
Customers who schedule an appointment to try on the Apple Watch are extremely likely to walk away with a preorder for the device, according to a new informal poll of retail employees conducted by an analyst.
Timothy Arcuri of Cowen and Company visited Apple retail stores in the San Francisco Bay Area over the weekend, and spoke with employees about the try-on appointments that began last Friday.
Apple employees indicated to Arcuri that nearly all customers who came in to try on the Apple Watch preordered the device. The analyst said his team spoke to several dozen salespeople at each retail store, and they said between 85 and 90 percent of those who had an appointment to try on the Apple Watch bought in to the device.
The informal poll has led Arcuri to estimate that opening weekend preorders for the Apple Watch could easily be in the 1-million-unit range. To him, this number is "respectable," and even a little better than he had anticipated.
Separately, research from Slice Intelligence suggested that Apple Watch preorders may have reached 1 million in the first 24 hours of availability. Their data was based on a poll of 9,090 online shoppers.
Arcuri continues to estimate that Apple will sell about 3 million Apple Watch units in the June quarter, and the number will increase to 7 million units in the September quarter. He sees the average selling price at launch being at $449, and dropping to $422 in the subsequent quarter.
Looking longer term, Arcuri believes Apple will sell 31 million units in the first 12 months of the Apple Watch. If that prediction comes true, he noted it would be the company's largest initial year of sales for any new product category in its history.
Cowen and Company has maintained its price target of $135, with an "outperform" rating for shares of AAPL.
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111 Comments
31 million is an insane prediction. If Apple sells more than 5 million, the Apple Watch should be considered a massive success.
I might have pre-ordered a watch after the scheduled try-on but they would only allow pre-orders on-line so at the end of the demo my wife and I went home. At the try-on, they did not know the complete set of prices. They had to go into the menus on an iphone-like-device to find out. That was pretty tedious.
I had some questions that the Apple sales people couldn't answer:
1. will there be aftermarket bands for the watch? Is that something Apple is prohibiting somehow?
2. What does the watch do or say when it goes out-of-range of the cellphone or if the cellphone is powered off?
3. Can you get the phone's battery level to show on the clock-face along with the time?
4. Is the magnet on the Milanese Loop band a danger to credit card magnetic strips in my wallet?
5. what software support is there for wearing the watch on the other arm? Does it move the crown-knob to the other side?
Not surprising. But how do we know? Are Apple employees guiding customers to a computer in store, or assisting them with doing it on their iPhones? Or are they just saying they are going to pre-order? BTW, I don't think the picture with the Rolex side by side with the watch do it any favors.
Interesting, even if the estimates are high. I imagine this is largely due to the inability to wait in the traditional line to buy one. My try on didn't result in an order, as I am waiting to get some real world reports about the glass vs sapphire screens to decide which I want. But I listened to three other try on appointments while is was there, and all three resulted in a purchase. One of them resulted in two sales. I assumed that was just pure luck, but maybe not.....
Is "it" the Rolex or the Apple Watch in your statement? Looking at the two on his wrist I'm definitely more drawn to the Apple Watch.