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Almost all May Apple Watch orders shipping – and retail sales begin – within two weeks; seven more countries on June 26

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Almost all Apple Watches shipping within 2 weeks … but not this one

Apple has said that all Apple Watch orders placed during May will ship within two weeks, with one exception – and no prizes for guessing which.

All orders placed through May, with the sole exception of Apple Watch 42 mm Space Black Stainless Steel with Space Black Link Bracelet, will ship to customers within two weeks. At that time, we’ll also begin selling some models in our Apple Retail Stores.

This suggests retail store sales will begin around 18th June … 

Apple has also announced that the Watch will go on sale in seven more countries from 26th June, in both online and retail stores, as well as selected resellers. The Apple Watch will be available in Italy, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan from Apple’s online store, retail stores and selected resellers.

A ‘curated selection’ of models will also be available at 10 Corso Como in Milan, Boontheshop Cheongdam in Seoul and Malmaison by The Hour Glass in Singapore, said Apple.

Apple’s senior VP of operations Jeff Williams said that the company was making “great progress” with backorders.

The response to Apple Watch has surpassed our expectations in every way, and we are thrilled to bring it to more customers around the world. We’re also making great progress with the backlog of Apple Watch orders, and we thank our customers for their patience.

This will bring the total number of countries where the Apple Watch is available for sale to 16, following its online-only launch in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US. Apple is currently preparing for the retail launch of the Watch, and has said that native apps – that run directly on the Watch rather than via an iPhone – will be possible from the fall.

KGI last month lowered its forecast of Apple Watch sales by a further 20-30%, now expecting annual shipments of around 15M. Slice Intelligence also said that orders rapidly tailed off to below analyst estimates following dramatic first day orders.

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Comments

  1. chrisl84 - 9 years ago

    “making progress with the backlog”…..only because no one new is ordering the Watch. Finally fulfilling old orders is some accomplishment.

  2. Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

    My order dates back to the 10th of April. Even their catch-up is disingenuously whitewashed. May my arse.

    • twelve01 - 9 years ago

      Just out if curiosity, which model did you purchase?

      • Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

        42mm Stainless, with Milanese loop. The milanese has proven pretty popular I suppose. It’s the most delayed standalone band, still.

    • jamessmooth - 9 years ago

      That damn milanese loop will be the death of me. I ordered mine waaaaay back in April and it says it won’t ship until end of June. Def glad I ordered the watch with black sport band first, but still. Seems like quite a back up for the loop.

      • Thomas Yoon - 9 years ago

        We’re in the same boat on that one. They better not deliver it while I’m away on my Los Angeles trip, that would turn into the ultimate wait.

  3. bennynihon - 9 years ago

    got mine a 2 weeks ago. Like it, but needs a lot of work, as it’s too slow communicating with the phone. As I often end up with 50% battery at end of the day, I much prefer to have information fast and readily available. I don’t want to be spending minutes at a time on a watch.

    To that end, there’s no reason why it can’t sync small amounts of data at set intervals in the background. Within reason for course. Perfect example of this is the Dictionary.com’s glance ‘word of the day’. That needs to send a trivial amount of data just ONCE PER DAY. Yet, it will only refresh that on demand. So I’m stuck waiting for it to load, which at times can be quite long, and results in the screen auto turning off before I even get to see it. Which is a frustrating experience to say the least. There’s no excuse why that info can’t be auto refreshed in the background since it’s just once per day. Weather is also infrequent updates and would benefit from background refreshing.

    • Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

      I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Native apps are coming. Talk is Apple will announce the native SDK at WWDC (coming up in a couple of days). This will take care of your issue in pretty short order. I expect most developers choose to do exactly what you say… Transfer a small amount of data, and cache it.

      • bennynihon - 9 years ago

        OK cool. Thanks for passing that along. If that’s the case, then the experience will be infinitely better than what it is now. Obviously you wouldn’t want every tweet sent to your watch on demand, but for low frequency data (such as ‘breaking news’, ‘sports scores for only your favorite teams’, ‘weather’, etc.) it would be ideal to have that data ready for you to view quickly from the watch without it needing to sync with the phone when you need it.

  4. Robert Dupuy - 9 years ago

    I must have ordered just the right version of the watch, because I’ve had my watch for a month now. I ordered it and got it a couple weeks later, no problem.

    I ordered the 42mm sport with white band.

    But it’s really not what I’d call a typical apple product, its borked in so many ways.

    On the other hand, I believe they can fix most of the problems by allowing true native watch apps.

    They need more watch faces, because I just want a simple, large digital readout, and Apple only has ‘extra large’ which very disappointingly puts the hour and minutes on separate rows…I want just a simple large readout without the hokey two row nonsense.

    But right now, its Apple’s way or the highway, no developer watchfaces allowed – that needs to change.

    Secondly the third party apps can’t use the watch sensors and are loaded from the phone over bluetooth – 3rd party apps are hobbled.

    I care absolutely nothing for the concept of ‘watch as second screen for your phone’ – I want a standalone watch.

    If they fix silent siri, fix the watch face issue, make voice over navigation actually work, make the tilt your wrist to see the time actually work, if they allow native apps, if they fix the tinny speakerphone issue, if the fix the issue that the screen stops responding when your body is sweating – then I can see this being a useful product.

    Honestly, after wearing the thing for a while and mostly using it when running 5ks – I really just don’t use the watch, but will try again, after they do a major update to the OS….they certainly have thrown out a product with possibility – but Apple is hurting without Steve Jobs, no way Steve Jobs would release a product like Apple Watch.

  5. Jamie Gilder - 9 years ago

    Any thoughts as to what these ‘curated;? models might be? Sounds very interesting!
    Perhaps its those amazing colours Jony Ive debuted in Milan(?) last month

  6. Bernhard Prawer - 9 years ago

    Finally the Apple Watch will be dispatched to more 7 countries up to Friday 26.6.15. Whats about Austria? Why does they not receive the Apple Watch? Inspite of the Progress, not all countries in the World will have the Apple Watch very soon. Apple you have a lot of work yet, till you will have dispatched the whole World.

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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