14 DAY TRIAL // Apple’s wearable business is growing at a pace that not even the company itself expected, and CEO Tim Cook says it’s nearly at the same level as a Fortune 300 company.
During the shareholders meeting on Tuesday, Cook said the wearable division, which includes the Apple Watch, AirPods, and the Beats headphones, posts increasing revenue every quarter, with the Apple Watch obviously the main catalyst for this boom.
While Cook hasn’t provided any specifics, he did praise the quarterly performance of the Apple Watch, emphasizing that he’s “not a big fan of” the word wearables.
Without detailed information on the revenues of the wearable unit, we can only guess how much money Apple’s wearables generate by simply looking at Netflix, the company that’s currently on position 314 in Fortune’s 500 top.
Netflix’s 2017 revenues totaled $8,831 million, up 30.3% from the previous year, and $186.7 million profit, again up 52.2%.
Apple Watch sales estimates
While Apple doesn’t provide any sales figures for the Apple Watch, CEO Tim Cook revealed in the Q1 2018 conference call that the Apple Watch recorded its best-ever quarter, posting a 50 percent growth overall. It recorded strong double-digit growth in every region, while the newly-launched Series 3 models posted double the sales of the previous generation the year before.
Market analytics firm Canalys also provided us with a closer estimate at how the Apple Watch performed in the last 12 months, revealing that sales of the device improved by no less than 54% last year versus 2016. The Apple Watch Series 3 reached nearly 9 million sold units, while overall sales in the fourth quarter of the year increased 32% year-over-year and reached 8 million units.
Last year, Apple sold a total of 18 million Apple Watches, according to the same firm, and continued growth is expected this year as well, especially as the cellular version of the Series 3 gets carrier support in more big markets across the world.