It appears that Apple Watch delivery time frame of Apr 24 was more of a delivery day for some of these preorders than an actual launching period. Within sort time of the preorders starting on April 10, many Apple Watches were almost immediately sold out.
As a measurement for identifying how efficiently Apple has managed this supply kafuffle, the expert on the smart watches market took a break to calculate how many Apple Watches have really been delivered to cover the 1.5 million preorders made since April 10.
From their detailed research, it seems that only about 20 percent of all orders made beforehand have actually been delivered. This is unusually low for the company and obviously a reason of disappointment for the numerous patiently waiting clients.
30 days after Apple started taking pre-orders for its Apple Watch having as deadline the official release date on April 24, many clients — including those who requested them immediately after the company’s web store came back — are still looking forward to receive their watches.
As mentioned on Apple’s discussion boards and numerous social networking posts, many of these watches seem to be produced rather slowly in Apple’s factories, while the models equipped with top features and aimed toward the high-end clientele, have not been delivered to their rightful owners.
The models having the most significant delay are the ones with four Stainless Steel Carcass with Link Bracelet (costing from $949 to $1,099), the four Stainless Steel Case with Leather Loop ($699), and the four Stainless Steel Case with Modern Buckle (at $749), none of them being delivered at all.
Special gold Link Bracelets were seen on the Apple Watches worn by various starts, like Karl Lagerfeld, Beyoncé, and Kanye West, while the first Leather Loops and silver Link were sold as accessories — and not with the watches — in the last days. Particularly, Space Black models of the Apple Watch were produced in very limited numbers, so a few of the company’s stores did not even have their try-on models.
Some reviews mentioned recently that Apple has updated the official Black Space illustrations to present a darker carcass than it was originally shown, suggesting that some details might have been modified in the last moment in the model’s manufacturing process.
In a similar way, even if the initial shipping of Space Gray Sport model arrived just in time for its April 24 launching, several customers have revealed that purchases for this version have been backlogged. The sources have confirmed that many orders made for the 42mm Silver Sport model are fulfilled many days ahead of the 42mm Space Gray edition, while Silver Apple Sport watches are now sent to clients who requested them a week after the pre-orders started.
Both of these models are currently guaranteed with a “July” delivery date for new purchases. Reader reviews have shown that some of the dark Sport Bands delivered with the Space Gray and some other models of Apple Watch are discoloring after just few days of using them, and this fact may contribute to some of these delays.
Until now, Los Angeles high-end boutique Maxfield is only one retailer in America to have delivered Apple Watches in the same day or on the next day after purchasing them, having for some reason sold Apple Watch and Apple Watch Sport for the lucky clients who wanted to skip the very long Apple line.
Specialized online sources have verified the info according to which Maxfield has given a portion of the inventory to a group of mass buyers, having placed generous commands of 20-Watch lifetime caps on sales to those people. Having found this, Apple has immediately imposed a 6-Watch lifetime maximum on individual sales to discourage resellers.
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