Analysts have no idea how big the Apple Watch is going to be
Mar 10, 2015, 18:52 IST
Apple has finally revealed how much its long-awaited Apple Watch is going to cost, and analysts at banks and investment firms are scrambling to figure out what this means for the Cupertino, California, company.
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A new round of research notes have been pushed out overnight - and with them, come wildly varying estimates as to just how well the Apple Watch is going to sell.
Look how wildly disparate their sales estimates are:
- 7.5 million. Barclays is one of the most conservative, predicting 7.5 million in the 2015 financial year - though this will balloon to 31.6 million in 2016.
- 7.7 million. This figure comes from Goldman Sachs, who believe it'll then jump to 21.7 million in 2016, and 26.9 million the year after that.
- 8 million. Piper Jaffray concedes that this is low, but says that "what the Watch means to Apple in 2+ years is the most important exercise. They predicted December of 2016 as the first "breakout quarter," and that the device could reach shipments of 40 to 50 million by calendar year 2017.
- 9.1 million. J.P. Morgan pegs sales at just under 8 figures in the 2015 financial year, leaping to 47.2 million in 2016.
- 10 million. This estimate for 2015 comes from JMP Securities.
- 11.8 million. Stifel is claiming the Apple Watch will sell 11.8 million units by the end of 2015.
- 16 million. Jeffries says they "think this is the first time since the Ipod, that Apple might have introduced a new product category without dramatically raising the technology or capability bar over competition, particularly from Samsung." Nonetheless, they're going for 16 million.
- 16.5 million. Baird is a little more ambitious than Jeffries, calling 16.5 million for the 2015 calendar year.
- 17 million. Citi thinks Apple's new smartwatch will ship 17 million devices in its first 4 quarters on sale.
- 20 million. Credit Suisse reckons Apple will achieve calendar year sales of 20 million.
- 20.6 million. Cantor Fitzgerald says it "believes this new device will be worth the wait as we are projecting Apple Watch to go down as the best selling, new product category (in the first 12 months of availability in Apple's history." The iPad shipped 19.5 million units in its first year; the Apple Watch forecast is 20.6 million.
- 31 million. This extremely high estimate for the device's first year on the market comes from Cowen, but should be taken with a grain of salt. It's predicting sales will be boosted by an Apple Watch 2.0 will launch in Fall. There's currently no evidence for such a 2.0 launch, and runs counter to what we know of Apple's 12 month product cycles.
If we average out these estimates - including Cowen's guess - we get 14.6 million shipments in the device's first year. Take out Cowen's 31 million, and that figure drops to 13.1 million.