
Apple Watch Sales Crash 72%, We’re Not Surprised - alexwoodcreates
http://www.thememo.com/2016/10/26/apple-watch-sales-crash-72-were-not-surprised/
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FussyZeus
Is anyone surprised at this? You have to charge it every day like a phone,
except it can't function in it's intended purpose while charging. It's a huge
block of watch strapped to your wrist. Honestly they aren't even that pretty,
nor fashionable.

I was saying this was a dumb fad when they came out, and now with the release
of Watch 2 + the upgraded Watch 1, they've given a gigantic middle finger to
the early adopters who now have the only option of unloading them on eBay for
half what they paid.

Also, as any Apple regular customer knows: Never buy Gen 1 of ANYTHING made by
Apple.

The only watch I've seen that is somewhat compelling is the Pebble series, but
even then it's not native integration so the colleague I know who has one
constantly has issues with it, and yes it has week long battery life but
that's because the screen is a monochrome one that looks like it was pulled
from an old flip phone. None of these options are as attractive to me as just
pulling my phone out of my pocket.

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soneil
Not surprised at all, but from completely the opposite angle. I have the 1st
gen Watch. Love it. Only real complaint was the price - especially as I had to
pay the british price because it wasn't on sale here (yet?)

But I wasn't expecting sales of the new models to go well either. There hasn't
been enough iteration to provide a compelling upgrade for current owners - or
a clear enough 'sell' to make a mote of difference to anyone who wasn't
convinced by the first models.

I don't think it's failing, or that it's going to fail. But I simply don't see
it fitting this release cadence. Outside of a very compelling reason to
upgrade, I can't see myself upgrading my watch more often than, e.g., a
laptop. If I get less than 5 years out of it, I'll be disappointed.

I'll be interested to see where it goes from here. It's far, far too early to
rely on churn - they really need something that'll convince people who aren't
already convinced. And they simply don't have that yet.

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cyberferret
A short article, lacking in details. Interesting that they can state "72%
year-on-year decline" when in fact the Apple Watch has been on sale for only
about 18 months. Not yet enough sales data to compare two complete sales years
against each other.

In any case, this was discussed to death in another Smart Watch thread here on
HN a day or so ago. My take on it is that that Smart Watches need way too much
'babying' (i.e. time and conscious energy) to keep them operational at this
point in time, that the motivation to go back to 'dumb' devices that don't
require so much thinking and planning to keep active is just too strong.

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brlewis
Disclosure: I work at Fitbit but don't speak for Fitbit.

I've often heard predictions that Fitbit was doomed because its special-
purpose devices would be subsumed by general-purpose devices the way MP3
players were subsumed by smart phones. My retort has often been, "Yeah, just
like Palm Pilot killed iPods".

Timing is important. The technology has to reach a certain level before it can
have wide consumer appeal. Smart watches today are a niche tech toy, not
something everybody wants to use. We're at the iPod stage, not the iPhone
stage, in wearable computing.

~~~
drinchev
Fitbit is awesome. I use Fitbit Flex 1.0 and Apple Watch in a combo. Fitbit
works so well and is so cheap ( 60 Euros ) that I don't care what I do with it
and it has an API.

Because of the price Apple Watch will never be able to track :

1) My gym workouts ( having 400 Euro thing in the gym where I hit the boxing
bag - no way ) 2) My sleep ( I have to charge it every night, so impossible to
do that ) 3) My 3 days camping holiday ( Wood, scratches, fire, etc.. )

And anyway look what I did [1] with Fitbit's API & ubersicht [2].

1: [http://imgur.com/z9b3C9A](http://imgur.com/z9b3C9A) 2:
[http://tracesof.net/uebersicht/](http://tracesof.net/uebersicht/)

~~~
brlewis
Slick!

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melling
I think it's premature to say smartwatches are done. Apple's new watch was
only available for the last two weeks in September, and people knew it was
coming. I wrote a brief blog on this yesterday:

[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/10/25/smartwatch-sales-
are...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/10/25/smartwatch-sales-are-tanking/)

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noelwelsh
I think the analysis in the article is a big simplistic.

My own impression is not that the execution of the Apple Watch is flawed, but
that the idea simply doesn't deliver enough value to make it worthwhile. A
device for controlling my phone on my wrist just doesn't solve a problem I
have to the extent I'm willing to pays hundreds of currency units for one.
Maybe for some people, but it appears not a sufficient number to make a mass
market.

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informatimago
If they want to address the market of sportsmen, they won't be selling any
watch until they provide larger bands!

I'm not even a sportsman, (I use my arms only to type on a keyboard), and even
the largest bands sold by Apple are too small but to cut the bloodstream in my
left hand. Needless to say, I wear it only on rare occasion, it'll serve more
as a testing and debugging device than as an actual watch.

~~~
cyberferret
Yes - this puzzled me. I've got the Apple Sports Watch (via a credit card
rewards thing), and was surprised to see that I had to use the last hole on
the band to get it to fasten, and even then it is very tight on my wrist - and
I have very small and skinny wrists for a guy.

I initially thought they may have shipped me a ladies model by accident, but a
quick Google shows that they don't have separate mens and ladies models for
the Sports Watch bands?!?

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Kurtz79
Is this what is considered as an opinion article, these days ?

Two paragraphs of loose one-line sentences with no information whatsoever
besides what already comes in the title ?

Why is the author not surprised ? It comes from some deeper analysis done at
time ?

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uslic001
I like my Apple Watch more than my Fitbit. The only thing they need to do is
improve the battery life.

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akmarinov
That was like two sentences, why bother posting at all?

