Apple says Apple Watch broke records, but we still don’t know how many have sold

Apple earlier today reported earnings for its first fiscal quarter of 2017, which included the holiday season, and had good things to say about iPhone sales, Mac revenue, and, perhaps surprisingly, the Apple Watch. 

Borrowing a page from Amazon, which famously boasts of increases in device sales without giving any kind of baseline, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said that the Apple Watch set records “both [in] units and revenue” without going into specific details. 

“The holiday demand was so strong we couldn’t make enough,” Cook said, and added that in the wearables category, Apple Watch has the highest customer service satisfaction rating by a wide margin. “We couldn’t be more excited about Apple Watch,” he concluded.

Cook declined to share unit sales, just that it was a “record” number. And, since Apple lumps the Apple Watch lumped into its “Other Products” category when it reports earnings, there hasn’t been much transparency around unit sales to date. 

It’s also worth noting that revenue from this “Other Products” category, which includes Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, iPod, and accessories (dongles!), was down 8 percent year over year, to around $4 billion. 

Late last year, research firm IDC estimated a decline in year-over-year sales for Apple Watch, prompting Cook to refute the report in an email to Reuters. 

That said, even if Apple Watch is just the “billion dollar business” that Apple has said it is, it’s still doing better than many of its wearable tech competitors at the moment. 

The article was published on : theverge