Want to Learn About Apple Watch? Go to ‘Other Products’

By Adam Satariano

Apple Inc. (AAPL) is putting a limit on how much information it will share about the performance of Apple Watch.
The Cupertino, California-based company said yesterday that starting in fiscal 2015, it will lump Apple Watch with the iPod, Apple TV, Beats headphones and speakers, and other accessories into a new “other products” category in its quarterly financial statements. IPhone, iPad and Mac sales will continue to be broken out separately, along with revenue from services like the App Store, iTunes and Apple Pay, the mobile payments system that rolled out yesterday.
By packing Apple Watch into the “other products” group, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is giving himself wiggle room about how much he has to disclose on Apple Watch after it’s released in the U.S. next year. The disclosure process for the new wearable device, which will
have a starting price of $349, is different from how Apple handled the iPhone and iPad, which had their results immediately broken out after being released.
“This gives Apple cover for the early months of Apple Watch sales at least,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst and founder of Jackdaw Research. “If they’re low, the results will be buried with other product sales and hard for analysts to back out. But if they’re good, then Apple can still crow about them and split out results on an ad-hoc basis.”

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

The Apple Watch is displayed after a product announcement at Flint Center in Cupertino,... Read More

Katy Huberty, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said in July that Apple could sell 30 million to 60 million wearable devices in the first year. The company hasn’t forecast how it projects the Apple Watch will sell.

Don’t Peek

Cook said the disclosure policy doesn’t reflect the company’s expectations and that it was partly a way to restrict what competitors can see about how the gadget is selling. The company could decide to share more details later, he added.
“I’m not very anxious in reporting a lot of numbers on Apple Watch and giving a lot of details on it because our competitors are looking for it,” Cook said on a conference call yesterday.
The reporting change also is an end of an era for the iPod. The music player, introduced 13 years ago, has seen its sales fall dramatically after the 2007 debut of the iPhone and will no longer be broken out separately by Apple.