Apple Watch Trends

Sales prediction 25.10.2014 (first three months of sales): 400 000 units

Sales prediction 11.9.2014 (first three months of sales): 2 700 000 units

Welcome to my page dedicated to the Apple Watch launch and coming announcement. Here, I try to estimate the sales of the Apple Watch based on the search activity as measured by Google Trends. The key measurement I make is the relative search volume for Apple products at their announcement date, launch date, and first quarter of sales.

Update 25.10.2014, sales prediction
If the current low search volume continues, the projected average searches for the Apple Watch in the first quarter after the announcement will be 0.4, meaning sales in the first quarter of sales would be 400 000 units.  

If we take a closer look at the searches for the Apple Watch (past 90 days, only the Apple Watch), we see that the zero search volume when compared to the iPad and iPhone isn't masking anything of importance.


Update 24.10.2014
As of today, the search volume for the apple watch when compared to the iPhone and iPad has been zero for the previous three weeks. The fall is simliar to that of the other Apple Watch products after their announcement, but confirms my hypothesis that the interest is significantly lower for the watch than the other products when they were first launched. This Fortune article lists some sales predictions made by analysts.Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein, says that their initial estimate of 30 million units sold in the first year appears high. Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray, puts sales at 5-10 million units, closer to my estimate of 2.7 million units in the first three months of sales.

The chart below is the updated version of a chart i published previously. The fact that the search volume for the Apple Watch has been zero for the previous three weeks is reflected here.


Update 11.9.2014
Original post from 11 September 2014 with background details on the methodology.

Correlation between searches and sales

For the iPhone, each unit increase in the average search volume index for a given quarter corresponds to 1.00 million units sold two quarters ahead. The intercept is -4.98 million units.

For the iPad, the sensitivity is somewhat higher. The average search volume index for a given quarter corresponds to 1.06 million units sold two quarters ahead with an intercept of -0.46 million units.

What correlation could be expected between searches and sales for the Apple Watch? Since the sensitivity of both the iPad and iPhone is close to one million units per quarter, I will use the same number here. I assume the intercept to be zero.

Apple Watch first quarter unit sales = Average SVI two quarters back *  1 million units.

The sensitivity of Apple products at the launch date has typically been lower than later. The sensitivity is in this sense conservative. Also, note that the sensitivity is dependent on the scaling used. The search volume index is always scaled by the search term with the highest search volume. In the sample, that is the iPhone in September 2012. If it would turn out that the maximum searches is now in October 2014, the sensitivities would need to be recalculated. This is so far not a problem.