Oliver Haslam·

Analyst: Apple Watch Series 4 May Affect Sales Of Entire Jewelry Industry This Holiday Season

As anyone who has tried to pick an Apple Watch Series 4 up will attest, getting hold of a new Apple wearable right now is not the easiest thing in the world and according to a couple of analysts, the outlook for the Apple Watch is increasingly rosy.

According to Cascend Securities, Apple is expected to sell 10 million Apple Watches during the December quarter, with those sales allowing Apple to rely on sales of up to $9 billion for 2018 as a whole. That’s a huge amount of money and further proof that Apple’s wearable is perhaps the only one that matters in the current market.

“We expect Apple will sell almost 10 million watches in the December quarter, and could account for almost $9 billion total calendar year 2018 sales,” wrote Cascend Securities. “Competing watches expected for the holiday season from Google and others are unlikely to be an issue for Apple: customers already in the Apple ecosystem will stay with the Apple Watch to use the combined features.”

That’s great news for Apple, but not so great for the companies making up the traditional watch industry, with MarketWatch reporting that Citizen’s Bank believing that Apple’s increased selling power and higher prices are taking up more and more of people’s discretionary income, meaning there is less money to go around and as a result, fewer traditional watches are being bought.

“By charging more for these essential tech products, it’s taking share of wallet from other discretionary items,” said Jaime Ward, group head of Citizens Bank’s retail finance group. “Jewelry will unfortunately be hurt by that.”

Apple never actually breaks out sales numbers for the Apple Watch but we do know that it continues to sell well. Deloitte forecaster, Daniel Bachman, has the situation absolutely spot on, saying that “The cool item to get under the Christmas tree is an Apple Watch, not necessarily a watch from the local jewelry store.”

(Source: MarketWatch)

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