Tuesday, 15 July 2014

About those iWatch sales projections



While Apple by most accounts is working on a wearable device of some sort (unofficially and already dubbed the iWatch), the number of conflicting reports about what the device will be able to do and how it will look is astounding.


One day, the iWatch is coming with a 2.5-inch display. A few weeks later comes a report that Apple is planning to release three iWatch models, with the largest display size being 1.8-inches. According to some, every iWatch model will feature a sapphire display. Others, meanwhile, claim that only the top of the line model will feature sapphire. Mass production will begin this month. Oh wait! There are technical hurdles so production is delayed.


In short, we know very little as to what this mythical iWatch will do and how it might look. And sure, theorizing about Apple's supposed next big thing can be entertaining, but some analysts have taken things a bit further and, rather bizarrely, have released sales projections for a device that doesn't even officially exist.


Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley, for example, is already projecting Apple might sell upwards of 60 million iWatch units next year. But Huberty is not alone; other analysts have raised their price target for Apple shares based on iWatch sales projections. It's pure madness, I tell you!


Having a bit of fun with this nonsense, John Moltz recently put together a comical guide detailing how one should go about projecting iWatch sales figures. You see, it's all about the cosine.



Now, it might seem ridiculous to try to predict how many of a thing we know nothing about will sell, but it's simple, really. You just take the total number of watches ever sold ever, take the cosine (always take the cosine... take it AND RUN AND NEVER STOP RUNNING), adjust for inflation, apply the least squares method (because only squares wear smartwatches) and then - and this is the part people always forget - take back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God, whose iWatch this is.



Makes sense.




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