TAIPEI, Taiwan — People who are looking to walk in to an Apple store to buy an Apple Watch after it goes on sale on April 24 will have to wait until at least June to do so. The original official release date of the watch was on April 24, however, the release date has been changed into “The watch is coming” based on Apple’s official website. In other words, Apple isn’t confident enough in shipping Apple Watch.
According to Bloomberg, Apple is keeping orders to its website because of limited supplies and high demand, while the watch officially goes on sale April 24, Apple has already predicted that many deliveries won’t arrive until June or July. The company began taking pre-orders on April 10.
Angela Ahrendts, the Apple’s head of retail, said that due to the supply problem of Apple Watch on the early stage, “We will only take pre-orders online.”
Allegedly, limiting orders to its website is a new strategy for Apple, which has traditionally attracted long lines of customers to its stores when a new device goes on sale. Instead, the stores are being used as showrooms for people to test out the new wearable gadget.
However, Apple declined to comment on the report.
Taiwanese Apple Watch supply chain Quanta and TPK withheld a comment on it with respect to the delayed of Apple Watch. According to an earlier report, Quanta’s packaging defect-free rate has reached to 60 percent, the problem falls on poor defect-free rate of components with haptic feedback and AMOLED display panels.
