‘Apple Watch sales plunge 90%’ and other utterly nonsensical natterings

OK. I’ve had enough and I can’t take n’more.

I am far from a fan of the Apple Watch (never liked it, don’t need it, would probably go Fitbit instead). But the gleeful headline horrors that we’re seeing over the past few days are complete and utter B.S.

Above: The sky is falling on Chicken Little …

I’m talking specifically about these kinds of headlines: Apple Watch sales plunge 90 percent. They’re intentionally sensational. They’re based on a very limited set of data. They’re at best misleading and at worst simply deceitful.

One thing that is clear is that Apple Watch sales are down from the launch pace.

We covered that story at VB too, based on research from Slice Intelligence which said, in a reasonably professional and restrained way, that Apple’s first real wearable’s sales are “slowing down.”

But what should also be clear to any journalist who covers pre-announced, pre-marketed, and pre-sold gadget launches is that day one and week one sales are always inflated by pent-up demand and presales and a massive marketing splash, plus coverage in the press. That’s true regardless of whether the vendor in question is Apple or Samsung or any other leading company.

So while 90 percent down could be seen as technically accurate, it’s functionally false.

The initial tsunami is always going to subside, at least for a while. We’ve seen that time and time again with new iGadget launches.

A more insightful approach would be to look at larger periods of time — months, quarters, or years — which would normalize the skewing effective of a massive flood of initial sales, and to refrain from overly eager characterization of changes in that revenue until there’s enough data to establish a realistic baseline.

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I don’t think the Apple Watch is a necessity the way a smartphone is. I’m not sure it’s as useful as a declining product category, the tablet, probably is. And I think there’s a long way to go for Apple to deliver the kind of features, style, battery life, and independent capability that would make Apple Watch more appealing to me, and, in my egocentric thinking, a wider swath of humanity.

So I’m not sure its sales will be stellar, and I won’t be shocked if they are mediocre at best. That fits my paradigm, and is exactly what I expected.

But I can’t in good conscience crow over that and overly sensationalize it to a “90 percent plunge.”

It’s simply not intellectually honest.