The Real Reason Apple Watch Missed Launch?
Instead of mass-producing too many specific Apple Watch models, and risk seeing some of them go unsold, Apple may have opted for a build-to-order tactic to better gauge interest for the device. The company may have simply made a number of Apple Watch models for in-store display and early preorders, and then waited for preorders to come in.
Going off of analyst Carl Howe’s insights, Smith reckons that, with this, we finally have a “sensible explanation” of why Apple missed its wearable’s April 24 retail launch date. Of course, I don’t buy it, and I don’t think you should either. After all, there aren’t that many versions of Apple Watch. Pragmatically speaking, there are only eight (two tiers, each with two sizes and two colors), and they’re split fairly evenly across gender and income lines. (Plus, Apple’s been selling black and white iPhones for forever, so they surely have some reliable metric on which kind of customer goes for what sort of tint.) Basically, any half-witted Market Analysis 101 dropout could put together a reasonably precise demand model for each version of Apple Watch.
Thus, if Apple really opted to build these things by any semblance of individual order, I’m afraid the company’s dropped the ball even more uncharacteristically than that missed window of availability would indicate. If the added complexity of Band combinations is truly the monkey wrench in all this, I find it doubly difficult to believe that Apple wouldn’t simply sell the Apple Watch bodies separately, having customers select Bands — which can presumably be made to order a heck of a lot faster than Apple Watch itself — during the checkout process. Why Apple would gimp production and foster a months-long wait due purely to uncertainties of accessory matching would be anyone’s guess. And my guess is that they didn’t.
Instead, Apple Watch missed its hard retail launch because the thing is hard to make, there’s a big bottleneck on the factory end re: failure rates with the POLED displays and Taptic modules, and the company put in its finalized order far too late to meet its April date.
Apple didn’t screw up the Apple Watch launch on purpose. When it comes to tech, I’m a seasoned conspiracy theorist myself, but the idea that they might have even thought about doing this is just a bridge (or two) too far.