Apple Watch shipments will see a drop by 25 percent year-on-year: KGI

A recent report reveals that an investment note by KGI predicts that Apple watch sales will fall by more than 25 percent in 2016. The investment note also forecasts the number of units Apple Watch will sell in 2016 as 7.5 million units, while estimating the sales of the device in 2015 at 10.6 million units. According to the KGI investment note seen by 9to5Mac, the wearable device market is still a “fledgling one.” KGI’s Ming-Chi Kuo also believes the Watch itself falls short in areas such as limited battery life and reliance on the iPhone for functionality. He also believes that the device lacks impressive applications and also has room for improvements in its respectable form factor. The analyst believes that demand may improve on the back of a new design in 2017. Drexel Hamilton’s Apple analyst Brian White has added a research note to his upcoming expectations about the next  Apple Watch . The analyst concluded that Apple will announce a new Watch model not in September along with the iPhone 7, but instead a bit earlier in June. White also added that the Apple Watch 2 will be 20 - 40 percent lighter than the current model and that it could also pack in a bigger battery. The Apple Watch hit pre-order in the US in April 2015 and finally arrived in India by November 2015, which was a bit too late. But even after a number of delays, Apple did manage to sell more smartwatches just on launch day than what Google with its Android Wear platform achieved in a year.