At the beginning of this week, the first information regarding estimates of pre-orders made for Apple Watch, this in the absence of official information provided by the Apple company, then the analysts claiming that only in the USA 1 million orders for the product would have been registered. The global figure would be much higher, approximately 2.3 million, and here we include the pre-orders made in all 9 countries where the product was officially launched by the American company, and if this is true, then we are once again shown how important it is the country for those from Cupertino.
Dividing the pre-orders by various models, the Asian analyst who provided this information claims that 85% of the pre-orders were made for Apple Watch Sport, over 14% of them being for the stainless steel model, while less than 1% would be for the gold model. Passing by now to production problems, the analyst claims that the screen and the haptic feedback system would hinder the partners Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), to increase the number of units manufactured daily, the Apple company intending to produce between 2 and 3 million units monthly until the winter holidays.
We estimate production could reach 2.5mn units in June, absent supply chain bottlenecks; thus global preorders are less than the 4.8mn units of combined production in March-June as most of those preordering can get Apple Watch in June. At present, iPhone shipments stand at 50-60mn units per quarter, suggesting less than one-tenth of iPhone users have preordered Apple Watch.
Based on all the information gathered by the analyst, it seems that up to 10% of iPhone owners have pre-ordered a Apple Watch from the Apple company, but the percentage could increase in the next period as more units are available in stores or for faster delivery.
