Apple took some heat for its foolish presumption when a leaked training document revealed early last month that someone at Apple — former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts, perhaps — was advising Apple Store employees that customers who make appointments to take a closer look at the Apple Watch “have already decided they want an Apple Watch.”
It seems Apple was right.
According to a team of Cowan & Co. Analysts who visited several San Francisco Bay Area Apple Stores over the weekend, nearly everybody who tried on an Apple Watch bought at least one.
Cowan’s Timothy Arcuri in a note to clients Monday:
We found several dozen salespeople per retail store who each had several dozen Apple Watch appointments during store hours. Based on our discussions, these showings are translating into Apple Watch pre-orders ~85-90% of the time.
Arcuri estimates that weekend pre-orders could easily be in the 1 million range. Other analysts put worldwide pre-sales somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million.
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at coins2day.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
