Asymco’s Horace Dediu has estimated that Apple Watch sales since launch total 33M, generating $12B in revenue. Of those numbers, he reckons 15M were sold in the past 12 months, with sales in this period totalling $4.9B.
While analysts are never shy of issuing estimates, Dediu does have a good basis for arguing that his numbers are solid – and for his prediction that there’s much more to come …
In a blog post, Dediu points to the fact that he issued his most recent estimate before Tim Cook revealed that Apple was now selling more watches than Rolex, and the numbers are consistent.
Cook also noted that Apple Watch sales had increased by 50% in the last quarter, and this is again consistent with Asymco’s charts.
My estimate has been that Apple sold about 15 million Watches in the last 12 months at an average price of about $330. This puts the Apple Watch revenue run rate at $4.9 billion, indeed above Rolex.
Dediu argues that while the Apple Watch is a success story – Rolex took 112 years to take the #1 slot, Apple took just 2.5 years – we’re still in ‘act one.’ Although the LTE Apple Watch can now be used without an iPhone, it still requires an iPhone to activate, and its limited battery life for calls means it is still clearly intended as a companion device. This, he thinks, will change.
Indeed, he compares its potential to that of the iPhone when it first launched, noting that too initially required a Mac or PC to activate.
Reviews of the Apple Watch Series 3 have been largely positive, with our own review concluding that it unlocks new potential.
The Watch was born a timepiece but it is traversing through the early iPhone and pulling in a new direction all of its own. The fact that we are talking about “Resting Rate”, “Arrhythmia” and “Atrial fibrillation” at a timekeeping launch event indicates that new behaviors will follow and so will the language we’ll use to describe this child-like product once it grows up.
