Apple Watch Demand 'Strong’ Says Best Buy CEO

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly said that the Apple Watch is off to a strong start and announced plans to expand Apple’s presence in its retail stores.

The company reported a rise in domestic sales of 3.8% for the second quarter, well above Wall Street’s expectations, and posted better than expected profit. The company has been adding floor space for growing categories such as smart homes and home theaters, but it has also been getting a noticeable boost from Apple and its devices.

We’ve also been working with Apple to update the 740 stores-within-a-store that were first implemented in 2007. The stores-within-a-store will have new Apple fixtures and are larger with more display tables for phones, computers, and tablets. We’ve already implemented approximately 350 of them, and expect to upgrade a total of approximately 520 by the holidays.

The additional display tables are great for the merchandising of Apple Watch, which went on sale at BestBuy.com and in more than 100 of our stores in August. Now, because demand for Apple Watch has been so strong in these stores and online, we are excited to share that beginning September 4 we will be carrying Apple Watch in more than 900 of our big-box stores. Apple Watch will be available in all 1050 of our big-box stores and approximately 30 of our Best Buy Mobile stores by the end of September.

It was originally expected that the Apple Watch would be available in all of Best Buy’s stores by the holiday season, but Joly is pushing for it to happen by the end of September given strong demand.

Despite Apple being hush hush about its sales, it does look like the Watch is off to a pretty good start. It will be interesting to see how much better it does if Apple does introduce new Sport colors in addition to watchOS 2, which aims to take much of the requirement of an iPhone away.

Does that mean we can stop calling it a flop now? Probably not.