John Gruber, on Slice Intelegence’s Apple Watch pre-order estimates:
They’re saying “957,000 people in the U.S. pre-ordered an Apple Watch on Friday” and that each ordered an average of 1.3 watches. That’s 1.25 million watches — and it’s only for the U.S. Apple Watch went on sale in nine countries last week, all of them major markets. So even if you believe Slice’s estimates are accurate, they imply that customers around the world ordered millions of Apple Watches, plural, on the first day.
When I started seeing this story earlier this week, I basically ignored it. I’ve never heard of Slice Intellegence, but even if their claimed “two million customers” number is accurate I can’t imagine it’s representative of the kind of person I would expect to have pre-ordered an Apple Watch on the first weekend. I doubt there are many early adopters that would voluntarily sign-up to have a company read their email for market research purposes.