Research says Apple Watch is affecting sales of traditional watches in the US
The traditional watch industry in the US fell the most in seven year in June. The reason behind the de-growth of the traditional watches is being attributed to the introduction of Apple Watch, according to reports.
According to data revealed by NPD Group, 927,500 watches were sold in the US in June, which is down by 11 percent from June 2014 and most notably, the largest drop since 2008, as reported by Bloomberg. Apple has not officially revealed the exact sales numbers of the Apple Watch. On July 21, when the Cupertino based tech giant announced its Q3 earnings, it had included Apple Watch’s sales numbers for the first time but the numbers were united with the “other products” category. Various market research firms are coming up with different numbers related to Apple Watch’s sales.
Recently, research firm Strategy Analytics had revealed that Apple Watch has grabbed a dominant 75 percent in the smartwatch market. On the contrary, a report on Wall Street Journal highlights the concerns of Apple Watch suppliers, which emphasises that the demand for Apple Watch is not real. Bernstein Research’s analyst, Mark Li figured out that a subsidiary of Taiwan’s Advanced Semiconductor Engineering could not even reach its “break even volume” of two million units per month in Q2 and besides that, the ASE subsidiary does not expect to fulfil its target during Q3.
In such a scenario, it is difficult to figure out, how Apple Watch could be affecting traditional watch sales. There are other factors that might have contributed to the year-to-year decline. For instance, lower-priced watch brands appear to be saturated at the moment and there are other smartwatches (other than Apple Watch) that could be affecting sales of traditional watches, reports PC Mag.
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