Apple sold more Apple Watches in 9 weeks than it sold iPhones and iPads when they first launched
"We looked back at similar periods for iPhone and iPad when they were originally launched, and we've actually sold more Apple Watches than we sold iPhone and iPad at the time," Apple CFO Luca Maestri told Bloomberg in an interview. "We feel very good about the start and what we feel particularly happy about is, frankly, the customer response, the feedback we're getting."
This is good news for the company, since analysts had speculated that demand had dropped off sharply immediately following the release. Research firm Slice Intelligence had estimated orders to have dropped by 90% since the first week of availability.
The iPad drastically outsold estimates when it first came out, moving 14.8 million units by the end of 2010 (it was released in April).
But Apple hasn't officially released any sales figures on the Apple Watch, and is instead lumping it into the "other" category of earnings. Apple reported $2.6 billion in revenue for that category, which also includes products like iPods. But Maestri that revenue from the Apple Watch was responsible for "well over" the $952 million increase Apple saw in that category this quarter. He elaborated that other items in the category actually saw sales fall.
This is a bright spot in a Q3 earnings report that saw Apple barely beat predictions on revenue but missed on iPhone sales, moving just 47.5 million units to the predicted 48.8 million. The whisper number was even higher, at 50 million.
In the earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said there were now 8,500 third-party apps for the Apple Watch, The Verge reports. And he said Twitter, Line, and WeChat were some of the most popular apps.
Apple stock is currently dropping, down more than 7% in immediate reaction to the company's earnings.