Tim Cook, and Apple executives in general, simply love numbers. Curious about how many iPhones Apple sold during a launch weekend? They’ll tell you. Wonder how much faster the A9 processor is compared to its predecessor? Not to worry, Phil Schiller has a chart for that. Indeed, Apple’s affinity for harping on impressive data points and remarkable sales figures is so deeply embedded within the company’s DNA that Steve Jobs once made a pastime out of blasting Amazon for its refusal to release Kindle sales figures.
“Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody,” Jobs once said.
Apple may not divulge information about hardware specs, but the company sure does enjoy bragging about sales figures. Except, of course, when it comes to the Apple Watch.
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Since its release last April, Apple has been uncharacteristically quiet about how strong, or perhaps weak, Apple Watch sales have been. Though Tim Cook has said that early Apple Watch sales have been stronger than early iPod and iPhone sales, Apple, with those two devices, didn’t make a point of keeping early sales figures to themselves. During Apple’s most recent earnings conference call, Cook did say that Apple Watch sales have increased sequentially with each passing quarter, but without knowing where the starting point was, it’s hard to really say how well Apple’s wearable is performing in the marketplace.
As a result, analyst projections about Apple Watch sales are completely all over the map. For Apple’s 2015 holiday quarter, the projected estimates of Apple Watch sales range from 3 million on the low-end to 10 million on the high-end. An even larger chasm exists when we take a look at analyst estimates surrounding cumulative Apple Watch sales to date.
With Apple set to release its earnings later this afternoon, it’ll be extremely interesting to see if the company finally discloses Apple Watch sales figures or if it will keep that information strategically guarded behind its vague and murky “Other Products” category.
