Apple Watch Sales Projected To Top One Million Units On Launch Weekend
Pre-orders for the Apple Watch open up on April 10, and the device is scheduled to gone on sale two weeks later. Analysts seem to be tripping all over themselves to project how big the opening weekend of sales will be for the Apple Watch, and Piper Jaffray is the latest to throw in its two cents.
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster is projecting that Apple will take in 300,000 pre-orders within the first 24 hours and that the company will sell one million units within the first weekend. Munster expands upon those figures, stating that the Apple Watch will have an 8 percent attach rate with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners.
Speaking with CNBC, Munster went on to add, “This first wave is mostly the fanboys.”
The last statement is mostly likely true as the Apple Watch will only work with iPhones, and the starting price is a hefty $349 for the Apple Watch Sport. For comparison, the ASUS ZenWatch starts at $199 while a fully decked out Motorola Moto 360 (gold case plus gold band) will run you $329. Both of those smartwatches run Google’s Android Wear operating system.
The stainless steel Apple Watch will start at $549 and the ultra-exclusive Apple Watch Edition will start at a mind-boggling $10,000. That high price of entry will get your some additional perks when shopping for your new wearable, but only doubles the warranty from one year to two years.
A recent Reuters poll suggested that 69 percent of Americans have no interest in purchasing the Apple Watch and that 52 percent of Americans see smartwatches as the next “passing fad” in tech. Apple CEO Tim Cook, on the other hand, sees thing different and thinks that the Apple Watch will not only become a key driver for future Apple revenue, but will also outclass all other smartwatches on the market.
“We weren’t first on the MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t first on the smartphone,” said Cook in an interview with Fast Company last month. “But we were arguably the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smartwatch—the first one that matters.”
