A Reuters-sponsored poll conducted by Ipsos has revealed that approximately six percent of adults in the United States of America are planning to buy a new Apple Watch. The poll showed that under four percent of women thought the device appealing whereas nine percent of men were tempted. The Ipsos online poll asked just over 1,800 adults about the Watch between April 8th and April 14th and Reuters’ claim the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.6%. By extrapolation and based on 2014 US census results, this means that Apple would expect to sell around fifteen million Apple Watches, if those asked followed through on their promise to buy the product. We’ve already seen how Wall Street expects Apple to sell between 10 to 32 million of the Apple Watch worldwide in this year alone.
Looking through the report detail, three quarters of people asked were not interested in the Apple Watch. The remaining quarter were at least “somewhat” interested. In the words of Van Baker, an analyst at Gartner, “it should serve Apple well if they can even get close to that.” The most interested demographic was in men between 18 to 28, the same demographic group who gave the Watch the highest “cool factor” at fifty four percent. What is of no surprise is how many correspondents admitted their love of Apple products. Poll respondent Sefu Grady, a 37-year old counselor living in Clinton, Mississippi, said this about the Watch: “I already have the iPhone, the iPad, pretty much everything that Apple offers.” He is said to be buying a basic Sport model for himself and a mid-range model for his wife in time for Mother’s Day. The trend here is that people who already own an Apple product are more likely to buy another, indeed fifteen percent of iPhone owners are planning on buying the Apple Watch. Conversely, eight percent of non-iPhone owners stated that they would consider switching to the iPhone in order to justify buying the Apple Watch.
It will be interesting to see how the extrapolated potential sales figures align with the real sales when Apple report, and how many people will hold off buying the first generation Apple Watch and instead sit it out for the second generation device, which presumably we will see at some point next year. And the final observation is that the influx of new smartwatches into the market will buoy interest in the overall product, which should in turn support sales of Android Wear devices.