Apple said to order up to 6m Apple Watch units

Apple is gearing up to launch the Apple Watch in April, and analysts expect the device to have a significant impact on the nascent wearable devices market.

The company has submitted orders to its Asian suppliers amounting to a combined 5-6 million units ahead of the launch, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing industry sources.

Half of the initial production orders are for the entry-level Apple Watch Sport, according to the report, while a third are for the mid-tier Apple Watch. Orders for the high-end Apple Watch Edition are relatively low but are expected to ramp up in the second quarter, topping 1 million units per month.

In the US, the Apple Watch Sport is set to retail at US$349 ($445), while the gold-plated high-end model is expected to surpass the price tag of the US$4000 Mac Pro.

The large volume of initial orders indicates that Apple expects to handily outsell the wearables already on the market from rivals including Samsung and LG. Research firm Canalys recently estimated that only 720,000 Android-based smart watches sold during the entire second half of 2014.

At least some market researchers share Apple’s lofty expectations. CCS Insight has predicted that the Apple Watch has the potential to sell around 20 million units by the end of 2015. This would make up more than a quarter of expected wearable shipments for the year and account for around 7% of consumers who own a compatible iPhone.

“The Apple Watch will be instrumental in taking the wearables market to the next level of growth. If successful, it’ll create a rising tide that will lift the whole market,” CCS Insight Chief of Research Ben Wood said. “If the Apple Watch performs as well as expected, its halo effect will result in a sales bonanza in the second half of 2015, with record-breaking shipments in the important fourth quarter.”

Total wearable shipments are expected to grow 158% in 2015 to 75 million units and climb to 172 million by 2018, he said.

Media reports meanwhile suggest that Apple has already scaled back its ambitions for the Apple Watch’s capabilities, removing a number of health-related functions.

The company has had to rethink plans to have the devices monitor heart rate, blood pressure and stress levels, because the sensors were too inaccurate even after years of R&D, according to the reports.

Factors including the tightness of the band and varying skin moisture levels are said to have introduced too much variability to be controlled for. Apple has also allegedly decided to shift the focus of the devices away from health monitoring to avoid having to deal with health regulators.

Apple is instead repositioning the devices as companion products for iPhone users. Technology Review notes that apps designed to run on the device are actually extensions of iOS apps running on an iPhone and are using the watch as an auxiliary display. Developers are forbidden from running code on the watch itself.

As a result, apps designed to make use of the device are expected to use simplified feature sets to accompany the small screen, such as providing notifications and simple interactions.

The dial-like digital crown on the side of the device can be used to navigate content on the device, by zooming in on sections of the screen or scrolling through lists.

Third-party developers are currently not allowed to make use of the Apple Watch’s haptic feedback functionality, according to the report. But if Apple removes this restriction in future it could also lead to the creation of a new class of apps making use of low-level communications such as vibrations or squeezes.

Image courtesy of Apple