Apple Watch sales top 1m ahead of launch
Pre-orders for the much-hyped Apple Watch have topped 1m ahead of the devices launch on 24 April, as early adopters rush to become the first to strap the tech giant’s latest shiny thing to their wrists.
Whilst respectable these numbers fall some way short of analysts’ expectations, suggesting that more optimistic projections of 60m sales over the course of 2015 may be way off the mark.
Speaking to the guardian, Ramon Llamas of tech market analysts IDC, said: “There are a lot of companies that would love to be selling 1m devices. But if you’re Apple, you’re sometimes unfairly judged when people say, ‘A million? That’s it?’ We started [our predictions for 2015] at 22m back in December and came back down to 16m. You’ve gotta give Apple a mulligan (a second chance) on their first-generation device – they’re learning a lot of things.”
Predictably the bulk of purchasers, some 72 per cent, are existing iPhone owners (unsurprising given that the watch needs an iPhone to sync with) with most punters opting for the Apple Watch Sport variant over its pricier stablemates.