From DailyTech: Pre-orders of various models of Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) long awaited smartwatch, the Apple Watch opened up on April 10 at 12:01 a.m. PST (3:01 a.m. EST). The stock available for preorder -- priced at $349 USD and up for various models -- quickly sold out, with Apple reporting that some variants would be out of stock until as late as July.
That means two things -- lines and price gouging resellers. It is anticipated that there will be modest lines at U.S. and international stores in hopes of getting one of the limited store stock for those who didn't preorder.
Only some Apple stores will get the smartwatches -- 53 in total worldwide (of which 21 are in the U.S.) -- will get the watch (the specific stores that are getting it were first noted by MacRumors). People who are unwilling to get in lines are already paying up to a 200 percent markup to get one of the preordered units, many of which have been popping up on eBay, Inc.'s (EBAY) auction site.
All this leads to a compelling question -- how many Apple Watches were preordered?
Apple isn't willing to say quite yet, although Tim Cook did tell CNBC that he considered the order volume "great." For now the best estimate of the number of preorders comes courtesy of Slice Intelligence, who tracks sales volume via logging the email receipts of customer on popular platforms who consent to be tracked. Based on a 9,080 customer sample of those who preordered (out of 2 million users on its platform), Slice estimates that preorders came in at 957K units -- just shy of 1M units.
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