back to article Tablets, smartwatches just not doing it for Apple right now

Apple's third quarter sales – due to be published tomorrow – will show the continuing value of iPhone and Mac products, while the Apple Watch and iPad merely disappoint, suggest a KGI analyst. Sluggish growth in the sales of wristjobs and the continuing decline of tablets is reported by a "well-connected" KGI analyst, Ming-Chi …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I have a family member who is a bit of an apple nut. And even he turned his nose up at the apple watch. "Too nerdy for me" was his response. Though he does like his expensive watches in general.

  2. MrWibble
    Joke

    Ah, but it's an infinite percentage increase over last year's sale of the watch - such a big number, that it can't be calculated!

    I expect they'll compare the sales to the android version to show how great it is.

  3. Nanners

    Whatever

    thank goodness apple exists or I would wind up slitting my wrist while staring at a windows box after I had pulled my hair out trying to get mundane tasks done. But I'm not going to shell out every two years for multiple new products I don't need to update. The phone is essential. A laptop is pretty essential... After that you are just throwing money at them and only the stupid rich do that.

  4. Mage Silver badge

    Obvious

    The iPad is in a saturated market. People don't break or upgrade Tablets as often (no stupid phone plans which in reality "tax" everyone with a mobile.). Also "Tablets" start at £40 approx and even Samsung has some cheaper ones about £120. There is simply nothing compelling about the iPad walled garden and its pricing.

    So what are the iPod figures?

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Obvious

      I expect my tablets to last a fair while, my phones to last longer and don't use a laptop.

      The iPad (moved to apple for specific audio control applications) will do me for a good while, it's not going to get replaced quickly, much to Apple's displeasure.

      OTOH, after using Android until this iPad I'll be getting another when it does die...

      My phones don't seem to die quickly either. Currently my Desire S is running with about a 10 day battery life (it complained this morning about low battery, with 10 days and some hours reported by the battery usage meter) - amazing how well these things last if you leave them in a pocket - it gets WiFi every month or so to update the contacts from the Goo machine.

      In the western worldd the market is both saturated and mature.

      There are no killer features, there is no obligation to replace products that work - so people don't.

      Shock results indeed.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Obvious

      Apple iPads - a little to good for the companies growth

    3. Simon Cresswell

      Re: Obvious

      And in fairness to the iPad my 4 year old one is still working well after multiple drops on very hard surfaces.

      Ok the screen is cracked and the chassis is bent but it's sitting here streaming Steve Hackett quite happily* - perhaps the obslesence dept was having an off day.

      *Obviously I refused Apple's kind offer to neuter home sharing with iOS 8.4.

  5. Mage Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    3.9M Apple Watches

    That many?

    Be interesting to see next quarter.

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge

      Re: 3.9M Apple Watches

      Even if those 3.9M Apple Watches were the cheapest $349 "bargain" models Apple would still have raked in $1.361B. The cost of material is reportedly at somewhere to the tune of $85, so the profit is still a cool $1B or so. While the development and advertisements and logistics etc. have cost tens or even hundreds of millions, the whole project must still be highly profitable even if the sales figures are in the WinPhone category.

      Whether Apple can sell the thing in the future remains to be seen. Are people ready to upgrade their watch every (few) years, or is the market already saturated?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Merely disappoint? Wish my business was as good....

  7. 45RPM Silver badge

    Outside the editorial hyperbole, isn’t 3.9M rather a lot?

    To put that Apple Watch figure in perspective, the iPhone sold 1.39M in its first half year - and that was for an established product category for which the advantages were already clear (everyone wants a phone, email and the internet, right?)

    The sales for an entirely new ‘early adopter’ category should be weaker, and smart watches are still a category for which the advantages are unclear to most people, so 3.9M Apple Watches sold seems like an absolute bucketload to me.

    I still don’t want one though.

    Source: http://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Outside the editorial hyperbole, isn’t 3.9M rather a lot?

      although it's technically not a new category, it might as well be since android wear devices only shipped (not sold) 720k devices in all of last year. admittedly the announcement of apple's offering likely hurt smartwatch sales for the last quarter, but as you point out, the category is barely there.

      http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/android-wear-sales-bad-compared-to-phones-ok-compared-to-other-watches/

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      iPhone was not an "established product category"

      Sure, there were smartphones back then, but they were as far behind compared to the iPhone and the Android phones that followed in its footsteps as the original 1903 Model A was compared to a Bugatti Vitesse.

      Especially since iPhone was not targeting the "geeks and PHBs" that were the only customers of smartphones previously, but the other 98% of the population who didn't even know what one was or why they would ever want one until they saw what it could do.

      Smartwatches are in the same place smartphones were in 2006, currently being purchased only by geeks and the fitness-obsessed. The question is whether Apple can broaden the appeal of a smartwatch the way they did with a smartphone. So far I've seen zero evidence they have done so, so they better have something up their sleeve that will make it desirable outside the current narrow market segment buying Android Gear and Fitbit.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Will they announce Watch sales?

    Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought they said they would not be breaking out those sales. Regardless of whether they announced that before its release, if they don't everyone will assume the sales are terrible, so they might as well. A lot of companies don't report unit sales data at all, but Apple has set the bar by reporting numbers for their products in the past, so if they don't for the Watch people will assume they're hiding bad news.

  9. k9gardner

    Awful aphorisms

    Do we really need to suffer through "fruity folk" twice in one (brief) article?

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