Apple's first year sales of their watch was a failure with 10 million units sold... (2024)

IOT_Apprentice 11 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer

Apple's first year sales of their watch was a failure with 10 million units sold instead of the projected 40 million. Apple now has 34% of global market share. Now remember Steve Ballmer laughing at it.

It is not the 1st generation of most of their products, but the follow ons.

I'll wait to see what the first months of hands on reviews and perhaps a personal demo. How heavy is that headset and how long is the battery life (I thought I saw 2 hours)?

Time will tell.

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lynx23 11 months ago | next [–]

Good example. When the 1st gen watch came out, I knew I wanted to have one, but I also kind of knew I wouldn't want the first generation. Lucky me, because I had quite some GAS at that time, the 1st and 2nd gen watches were never really easily available where I am located. Then, I conveniently forgot about the desire to own one. For years. I now have my first watch, 7th gen, and love it. Well, it is more like with a cute pet. You love it, and you learn to love its quirks. So even after 7 generations, the software is still not flawless, nor are the sensors. This is the first thing I would be worried about, if I had any inclination to use a headset: How distracting are the bugs they definitely will have? Since I totally stopped to install anything below iOS #.2 I wonder how "fun" it is going to be to use this product once it comes out :-) I have no trust left in their QA, shipment date is more important then user experience... :-(

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jval43 11 months ago | parent | next [–]

Apple only truly started competing against Garmin recently. Improved running metrics, low power mode, better battery (Ultra) etc only showed up recently while Garmin and others had them for years. Even GPS wasn't on the first iteration.

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lynx23 11 months ago | root | parent | next [–]

I am not looking for a fitness tracker, so Garmin is not even close to competition for an Apple Watch to me. Why? I use VoiceOver. Garmin does not have any speech output at all, so they can not even be compared for me. I do a lot of FaceTime Audio from my watch, another use case where Garmin doesn't even come to mind. Dont forget that products these days have a pretty diverse feature set. Assuming everyone is looking for a fitness tracker just because this is the new hype is rather, erm, unimaginative.

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iamacyborg 11 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I’m still unsure that they’re any sort of competition for Garmin and co yet.

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saiya-jin 11 months ago | root | parent | next [–]

They are not (yet), but target group doesn't care about raw stats, or price/performance ratios. But I love them, because they will push Garmin making even better watches, so everybody wins.

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iamacyborg 11 months ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah it's a win/win for users I think. I just upgraded to the Fenix 7 Pro range and it's very nice.

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cogogo 11 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not sure how you can say they are not competing. Anecdata but I considered a garmin vs apple watch. Biggest driver was cellular to call either my wife or 911 when kitesurfing alone (yeah I know I just shouldn’t do it) so chose the apple watch 3 when it came out. Now have an ultra and that’s really starting to catch up with some of the other features I wanted. Seen several people in the kiting community pick apple vs garmin and vice versa for a myriad of reasons.

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Apocryphon 11 months ago | prev | next [–]

The Apple Watch has truly succeeded in the smartwatch space, but is the smartwatch space even worth a damn yet? Or is it perpetually waiting for the opportunity to monetize users’ health data and other tracked biometrics, for it to really be profitable.

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2muchcoffeeman 11 months ago | parent | next [–]

Maybe this “space” thinking is wrong. Don’t worry about the “smart watch space”. Worry about making a product that will make a bucket load of cash. Does it matter if the sector is worth much overall when you rake it a butt load of money for yourself?

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Apocryphon 11 months ago | root | parent | next [–]

That’s what I’m getting at. Is the smartwatch market in general really worth all that much money?

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bryanrasmussen 11 months ago | root | parent | next [–]

https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-health/digital-...

Revenue in the Smartwatches segment is projected to reach US$44.91bn in 2023.

Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2027) of 8.26%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$61.69bn by 2027.

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usrusr 11 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

By that measure, the iPhone is a total failure, together with the smartphone market it created. It pales to insignificance compared to the market for food! And don't even think of looking at the market for shelter, then it's hardly even a joke, why bother. Or maybe that that's not really a meaningful angle of looking at markets?

What exactly is the "all that money" you talk about anyways? If Apple's watch division was a separate entity on the stock market and they had inexplicably high valuation I might enthusiastically agree with you, but it's not.

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NavinF 11 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Anecdotally, the Apple Watch is very popular in the bay area. I'd be very suspicious of any claim that Apple didn't make boatloads of money selling it

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pfannkuchen 11 months ago | root | parent | next [–]

Neither butts nor boats are all that large though. Even if Apple has made both boat loads and butt loads of money, we would need to be talking about gigabutts or kiloboats to get anywhere meaningful.

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swexbe 11 months ago | root | parent | next [–]

Maybe it's a butt full of prepaid debit cards?

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agentgumshoe 11 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It is while people still have too much money to spend.

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lkbm 11 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I'll agree that smartwatches seem niche and not particularly useful. (I've never had a smart watch other than Fitbits, but I really don't see much value beyond tracking steps and heart rate. The notifications on my wrist aren't useful; maybe controlling music would be, but I'd rather just do that on my headphones.)

That said, it's probably a lot easier to switch to Android if you have an iPhone vs. if you have an iPhone + Airpods + Smartwatch + iPad + Apple laptop. The smartwatch as one additional small tether could make it worthwhile for Apple all by itself.

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kaba0 11 months ago | prev [–]

But the watch has a real use case and is in the price category that people can actually afford it.

But you are right, time will tell.

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kamaal 11 months ago | parent [–]

All of these depend on the individual. I've never had a wrist watch since I finished college(used for timekeeping in exams). Mostly because never needed it. Mobile phones were out by then, and you had a watch and much more in it. Its just that use case for me died out. I'm also into swimming, and other exercises(kettlebell), but the fitness features don't seem to be attractive to me either.

I didn't find the steps tracker etc wearables attractive either. It felt most people wearing them were interested in measuring and reporting things, than doing the actual workout.

But I just looked up now and the Wikipedia page for Apple watch says they sold more than 100 million units so far. And now have a fairly large portion of market for watches world wide.

Different people have different use cases, likes and dislikes. And there's also the additional public mood factor which is very hard to measure and understand. Based on that this product could be a huge success.

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saiya-jin 11 months ago | root | parent | next [–]

Agree 100%, most folks I know have Apple watches to appear sportive, because its such a cool crowd to be in currently. The guys actually doing some proper trainings almost never have them, including me. There is also category of pros/semi-pros/hardcore amateurs where it actually makes sense to use some form of it(but I never saw pros training ie in Chamonix to wear Apple brand for that, and those folks all have chest straps), by measuring any small deviations, progress etc.

For me, it actually distracts me from workouts and activities. I used my wife's Fenix 6 pro twice for running to get the idea how long my usual trail run in the forest is, and how much elevation I gain/lose. What I estimated from my feeling was anyway 95% correct (although I don't think watches measure small variations of natural terrain very precisely). But it was distracting, looking at heartbeat you subconsciously want to push/keep yourself in some perf bracket (ie just below or above anaerobic threshold for me). Vibration after each km (probably can be turned off though).

After that measurement, running again without them was so liberating, and had this nice feeling of extra freedom in the nature, just me and the trail. I feel very well when I cross anaerobic threshold, perform above it or being close to it, don't need gizmo to tell me so.

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kaba0 11 months ago | root | parent | prev [–]

Of course all of this depends on an individual. But apple is a for profit company that spent a tremendous amount of money on the R&D of this device, and I don’t see a good return of investment here, as not many people need it, let alone can afford it.

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