KGI Securities yesterday cut its Apple Watch sales estimate from 20 to 30 million down to less than 15 million, citing evidence of cooling demand for Apple’s smartwatch. A separate report shows that not only can market analysis firms not agree on expected sales numbers but they can’t even agree on whether Apple Watch demand is increasing, plateauing or even falling. In a contradictory report, Morgan Stanley raised its own sales estimates 20 percent from 30 to 36 million units for the first 12 months of availability.
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty based her new estimate on the company’s own AlphaWise U.S. Wearables survey and describes it as “conservative.” She does expect that supply will “significantly undershoot” demand for the first six months of sales, likely as a result of (now resolved?) production issues related to the Taptic Engine component in particular. As supply improves, sales will improve dramatically with the extra six million Apple Watch sales likely to come in the December 2015 and March 2016 fiscal quarters.
Early Apple reviews have been fairly positive but also suggest that more is needed to truly make it a compelling product, a comment that has been leveled at pretty much every other smartwatch on the market as well. Apple took the first step in that direction with the rollout of the Watch OS 1.0.1 update. More enhancements are likely to be announced at WWDC 2015 in early June.
Source : Apple Insider