Here’s one for the Apple Watch watch: Best Buy, which today reported earnings that beat expectations, is crowing about “strong demand” for Apple’s timepiece.
The retailer’s second quarter ended at the beginning of August, right before it started selling the Apple Watch. But Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly reportedly said at this morning’s conference call that demand for the Apple Watch has been so strong in stores and online that the retailer will expand watch availability to all of its more than 1,000 stores by the end of next month. Best Buy was the first other retailer besides Apple to sell the Apple Watch.
Also, expect to see more robust Apple displays the next time you walk into a Best Buy — the retailer said it’s working on that.
Any hint about Apple Watch sales numbers is welcome, since CEO Tim Cook has said the company won’t be releasing specifics about the watch for competitive reasons. Although what do you know, Cook said during Apple’s earnings call last month that watch sales exceeded expectations. “We feel really great about how we did,” he said, and touted “customer sat” as “off the charts.”
(For those of you who aren’t hip to the lingo, that’s customer satisfaction — which some Apple Watch users told my colleague Troy Wolverton about recently.)
Based on what Cook said about Apple Watch sales and Apple CFO Luca Maestri’s statements when the company reported earnings, the Verge estimates that Apple Watch brought in more than $1 billion during its first couple of months of sales. As for actual numbers of watches sold — well, Best Buy’s CEO says the demand is strong.
Photo: Troy Wolverton of the San Jose Mercury News uses maps on an Apple Watch in San Jose on April 29, 2015. (Gary Reyes/Bay Area News Group)