LONDON: Apple has sold Apple Watches worth a minimum of $1.7bn (£1.1bn) in the first six months of the smart watch’s life.
Tech website Venturebeat.com has pored over the Californian tech giant’s annual report and traced the company’s veiled references to Apple Watch sales back to the minimum figure of $1.7bn.
Sales of Apple Watch were described in the report that covers the fiscal year 2015, which came to an end on September 30, only as accounting “for more than 100% of the year-over-year growth in net sales of Other Products”. Apple’s Other Products category grew from $8.379 billion in 2014 to $10.067 billion in 2015, putting Apple Watch’s sales at $1.7bn.
However the actual figure could be much higher given that falling sales of iPad would have dragged that category’s growth into negative figures before Apple Watch’s sales were taken into account.
The website goes on to speculate that Apple Watch could grow into a $5bn business within this fiscal year.
Other figures plucked from the report show that Apple spent $8.1bn (£5.3bn) on research and development, employs 110,000 full-time employees (with 46,200 working in its 463 Apple Stores as of 2014) and paid $11.4bn in dividends in the last year. The company also spent $104bn (£68bn) buying back stock from the $140bn budgeted by the board.
