Since its launch, Apple Watch sales estimates have either shown it as doing incredibly well, or that it’s doomed to failure. Tim Cook hasn’t announced any figures yet, and may not even report them during tomorrow’s quarterly earnings call. But that won’t stop analysts guessing. If recent “estimates” are anything to go by, the financial wizards in charge of looking in to these numbers have no idea what’s going on. Estimates are all over the place…
Philip Elmer-DeWitt over at Fortune has compiled a list of 27 analyst estimates recently published, and shows just how little anyone seems to know about how well the Apple Watch is doing. Although the average is a seemingly safe 4.07 million units, the range from highest to lowest estimate is huge.
Sundeep Bajikar, a professional analyst from Jefferies, estimates Apple has sold 5.70 million Watch units. The lowest guess is just 2.85 million units, almost 3 million short of the highest estimate. And while that estimate was submitted by an amateur analyst, there are number of professionals (including Gene Munster, and KGI) who aren’t too far off that estimate. Piper Jaffray, Oppenheimer, Canaccord and Credit Suisse financial analysts have all submitted estimates of 3 million units. Still some way off the highest guess.
The long and short of this is that nobody seems to know anything. It would be normal to see variations like these estimates for iPad sales, which typically sell in to the double figures (of millions). But to see the highest guess at double the number of the lowest is virtually unheard of.
Apple will announce its quarterly earnings for Q3 2015 tomorrow. Whether or not Tim Cook announces Watch figures is yet to be seen. Last fall, Tim Cook is quoted as saying that he’s “not anxious in reporting a lot of numbers on Apple Watch, because competitor’s look for it.” If he sticks to that tune, we’ll be guessing for a little while yet.
