Apple Watch Sales Disappoint

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated May 6, 7:10AM EDT · Published May 4, 7:19AM EDT

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Apple Watch Sales Disappoint — © Apple Inc.

Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) disappointing earnings proved that the company’s run as a growth stock is over for now. Quarterly revenue dropped 4% year over year to $90.8 billion. Earnings were flat at $1.53 per share.

Investors were particularly disappointed by the decline in iPhone revenue, from $50.3 billion to $46.0 billion. Another smaller division also had a poor quarter. Revenue in the Wearables and Home Division dropped from $8.6 billion to $7.9 billion.

“Wearables” include the Apple Watch, iPods, and Air Tags. To some extent, these are tied to iPhone sales. They mostly work with the iPhone, though the Apple Watch is a standalone product when configured separately. When the Apple Watch was launched in April 2015, it was supposed to be another Apple “breakthrough” product. It was newer than the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It comes in several sizes and colors and is sold at price points from $249 to $1,249.

Did the Apple Watch fail to catch on? Apple does not break out figures. Perhaps slow iPhone sales pulled down its smartwatch sales as well. Perhaps it is too niche a product. Or perhaps the slow sales are because of several competitors, particularly from Garmin, Coros, Polar, Samsung, and Google.

One thing is for certain. There is no product to save Apple other than the iPhone. The Apple Watch joins other products that did poorly last quarter. And none of them has shown enough growth in the previous several years to be an engine to help the entire company.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.