Another Poor Apple Watch Sales Report Produces Controversy

The Apple Watch, which is in its first edition, has sold far better than any other smartwatch. Still, despite reports that the watch is selling well and earning millions for Apple, there are also several reports that the Apple Watch is a huge flop. The Wall Street Journal produced a huge hit piece on the Apple Watch on Friday.

“Mark Li, an analyst at Bernstein Research, said an ASE subsidiary told investors on a conference call that it didn’t reach its ‘break-even volume’ of two million units per month in the second quarter. The ASE unit also said it didn’t expect to reach that level during the third quarter – a busy production period before the holiday sales season – and wouldn’t commit to reaching it during the fourth quarter either.”

This report has led to controversy because it is believed that a company who produces parts for Apple is not supposed to talk about sales figures — that would be a huge breach of contract. You can bet that if someone from ASE did say something, ASE will no longer be producing parts for Apple.

Like others, Apple Insider is suspicious about the report and believes that the data isn’t important in the first place.

“Despite Apple’s assurances that Apple Watch is meeting internal expectations Wall Street saw the non-announcement as a miss…At this point analysts, pundits and mainstream media reports are extrapolating from supposition, hearsay and cherry-picked data to the detriment of readers and themselves.”

Many of the commenters after the article are calling foul play.

“Ah the same WSJ that said on January 13, 2013 Apple reduced iPhone 5 orders by half due to weak demand,” said commenter rogifan.

“So ASE break even is 24 Million watches annual, for an entirely new product? Not only were ASE overly ambitious, i doubt they will remain a supplier leaking out info like this,” said right_said_fred.

The Apple Watch has been controversial since its release. It has received mixed reviews, but reports, such as a highly cited one by Fortune, indicate that buyers are extremely satisfied with the device. 66 percent of the respondents said they were very satisfied with the Watch while 31 percent said they were somewhat satisfied. Two percent said they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with the Apple Watch and just one percent said they were dissatisfied.

It seems as if Apple has been successful for so long that people really want to see them fail. However, whether consumers or readers are fans of Apple or not, they should be aware of biased stories that have lately hit the Internet about the Cupertino company.

[Photo by Victor Boyko / Stringer for Getty Images]