Smartwatch Mania Strikes As Analysts Estimate Apple Watch Pre-orders Nearly Hit One Million Units

The early Apple Watch sales numbers are in, and to the surprise of not very many at all Apple's hyper-hyped new device blew the doors off the Internet on Friday, selling out the entirety of the company's initial stock in just six (6) hours. 

As reported here on HotHardware, pre-sales for the Apple Watch got underway Friday morning at 12:01AM PST (an unfair-by-virtually-all-standards 03:01AM on the East Coast) and just an hour later the shipping dates on orders for the shiny new wrist-worn technological marvel had slipped past the April 24 official launch date and into June and July for many configurations. The ride did not stop there, though, and by morning's end Apple was reporting the depletion of their smartwatch's entire first run. 

On its face, naturally, word of pushed shipping dates and depleted first-run stock sounds very impressive. Numbers can be pushed around quite easily, though, and without the actual sales figures it was easy to detect some skepticism with regard to the early word out of Cupertino. This view into doubtfulness, though, was vanquished today by sales estimates published by Slice Intelligence, which used e-receipt data to determine that 957,000 people in the U.S. succeeded in placing a pre-order for an Apple Watch on Friday when it first became available. Taking into account sample data from 9,080 online shoppers, Slice concluded that each Apple Watch customer bought 1.3 of the Apple-branded baubles at an average outlay of $503.83 per device. Specifically, they put the average buy at $382.83 for customers wanting to sport an Apple Watch Sport, and the average buy at $707.04 for those steeling themselves up for an Apple Watch (the lazily-named middle product, made with neither aluminum nor gold).

Apple and its shareholders must be extremely pleased by Friday's initial pre-sales burst, and the company is no doubt ramping up production in its wake, considering the 2015 sales predictions for the device among those who get paid to predict such things, which range widely from a conservative 10 million (S&P Capital IQ and Bernstein) to as high as 26 million-plus (JP Morgan).