In less than two months the Apple Watch will be released to million of eager fans. When it was announced last year the company said it would start shipping units in early 2015. They seem to be right on target. Shipments will begin in April.
With this “new” product Apple really has no idea how it will perform. This isn’t another iPhone. However a J.P. Morgan analyst estimates that Apple will sell 26 million units of its smartwatch throughout the 2015 year.
J.P. Morgan analyst Rod Hall thinks that by the end of the March quarter there will be 400 million potential customers for the Apple Watch since it requires an iPhone to function and is only compatible with iPhone 5 or newer. That seems like a fair estimate. Hall thinks that the Apple Watch will be on the wrists of 5 percent of compatible iPhone owners before the year is over.
He is predicting 39 percent margins for Apple, thinking that 95 percent of sales will be accounted for by the $349 Apple Watch Sport models. There will also be more expensive Apple Watch Edition models, with 18K gold, and these are expected to cost a few thousand dollars each. The hype has been expertly laid out by the company, so fans want to see the company’s take on the smartwatch. Will it live up to the hype? We will have to wait and see.
Source Ubergizmo