Fortune Analyst Survey Predicts Sweet Apple Watch Sales
When we asked analysts last September to estimate how many Apple Watches the company would sell in calendar 2015, the average was 22.6 million. That figure included one estimate — Katy Huberty’s 60 million (!) bull case scenario — that she hasn’t mentioned since.
We surveyed our analysts again today, seven days before Apple’s Spring Forward event, and got nearly the same average — 22.47 million — even without Huberty’s bull case. We didn’t ask for an average selling price, but among those who offered one, the mean ASP was $416.
20 million sales seems to be what a lot of people are thinking, and it’s right in line with projections that only five to 10 percent of existing iPhone users need to buy Apple Watch to make it a runaway success. I still think the ASP (average selling price) will be in the $500 range due to the potentially lower price of the stainless Apple Watch and Apple’s focus on available Band upgrades for that model in particular. The average shouldn’t be skewed by Edition, either, as it’s becoming more and more likely that those previous estimates of one million units ordered is an order of magnitude (or two) too high. Like we said earlier, Edition likely means “Limited Edition.”