For a company that typically likes boasting about unit sales, Apple has made a point of never releasing Apple Watch sales figures. Even though Tim Cook has routinely said that Apple Watch sales have steadily increased since its initial release — even going so far as to categorize Apple Watch sales as ‘off the charts’ a few months ago — the company has remained curiously quiet about how many are actually flying off the shelves.
Regardless, a recent report claims that Apple Watch sales in the coming year are poised to increase by an impressive 33%. Citing sources in the supply chain, Digitimes relays that Apple Watch sales in 2018 may check in at 20 million units, a solid increase from the 15 million units Apple is expected to sell once 2017 comes to a close.
With Apple ready to launch its third-generation Apple Watch, Apple’s overall smartwatch shipments are expected to rise to 4.5 million units in the fourth quarter and hit 15 million for the whole year 2017, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
The sources expect the volume to rise to 20 million units in 2018.
As for overall Apple Watch sales, Strategy Analytics published a research note earlier this month claiming that cumulative Apple Watch sales now stand in the 30 million range since the device launched in April of 2015. That said, if projections above are anywhere close to being accurate, Apple will have sold 50 million Apple Watch devices by the time 2019 rolls around.
On a related note, Apple is reportedly prepping the release of its next-gen Apple Watch, a device that will reportedly offer up improvements in performance, battery life and more. Most notably, the third-gen Apple Watch will include an LTE option.
