Apple and Microsoft: A sad week in tech
MarketWatch obtained a report from Slice Intelligence that states Apple watch sales have dropped by 90 percent. While Slice’s numbers have yet to be verified or confirmed by Apple, that’s a pretty huge and unfortunate decline.
Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson explains one of the red flags that indicates the watch isn’t doing so well.
“The company is not giving us a data point on the actual watch sales, which is kind of a departure from the usual. The company usually says, ‘Oh, and by the way, we sold 70 million iPhones this quarter or over the last two days,’ and so that I think is sort of telling,” he says.
There’s not only the issue of how many watches are being sold or not, but also how many are being returned.
“I’ve talked to people who’ve said there’s an unusual number of returns coming into Apple stores. So I think that this is looking like a tough sell for the company right now,” Johnson says.
One of Apple’s biggest competitors, Microsoft, is also having some problems. Microsoft has laid off an additional 7,000 to 8,000 of its employees.
“A lot of these people are coming from the phone division … you remember that there was a much larger number of folks laid off earlier. This is about Microsoft, I think, kind of refocusing. It’s about the larger mission of the company right now, trying to figure out what its core values are,” Johnson says.
Despite long-term success of Microsoft’s tablets, the company hasn’t figured out how to make its phones as successful. Johnson says Microsoft is “trying to figure out how to make the Windows phone something people want.”
In this respect, it seems like Apple and Microsoft have a similar problem on their hands (or wrists).
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