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What does Apple's financial report mean for the Watch?

Tim Cook kept tip toed around cold hard facts.

What does Apple's financial report mean for the Watch?

Apple has lifted the lid on its first earnings report since the Apple Watch launched in April.

How odd, then, that CEO Tim Cook passed on an opportunity to share Watch sales figures – instead cranking the spotlight onto the iPhone and iPad.

Glossing over its smartwatch, Apple folded Watch revenue neatly into the “other products” category, which includes the iPod, Apple TV, Beats headphones and other accessories.

It’s easy to speculate, but if the Apple Watch had busted all the blocks it’s likely Cook would have told us - presumably in between cartwheels.

What about the Watch?

Details on the Apple Watch's performance were instead replaced by this statement from Cook: “We had an amazing quarter, with iPhone revenue up 59 percent over last year, strong sales of Mac, all-time record revenue from services, driven by the App Store, and a great start for Apple Watch.”

Just how great a start, however, remains unclear.

Apple unbuttoned its lips to share that it had netted $2.6 billion in revenue for its “other products” during the third fiscal quarter. That’s an increase from $1.7 billion in the second quarter.

The Apple Watch launched in April this year

That looks like good news, but since Apple didn’t shine light on the number of units shipped in this category, we can’t work out how many Apple Watches were sold.

Still, the $1 billion bump up seems to suggest that the watch has provided a healthy boost to Apple’s bottom line – it’s just trying to work out exact numbers that’s tricky.

It’s particularly strange, considering that every major new product that Apple has released has been followed by a sales performance revelation.

When the first iPhone launched in 2007, Steve Jobs revealed at the end of the quarter that it sold 270,000 in the first two days after it released.

Likewise, when iPads hit shelves in 2010 Jobs said the “iPad is off to a terrific start” having sold nearly “3.3 million iPads that quarter.”

Apple’s failure this time to share cold hard numbers on the Apple Watch performance - and instead camouflage its sales among its other accessories – seems suspicious.

Cook seems outwardly confident of the smartwatch’s success, but considering that shares dropped 7.8 percent in after-hours trading, he needs to do a better job of instilling that confidence in others.

News Editor