Bloomberg: Apple Sold ‘Low Tens of Thousands’ of Gold Watches ⇥ macrumors.com

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman published a portrait today of Jeff Williams, painting him as a spiritual sibling to Tim Cook. It’s full of those de rigueur Gurman insider vignettes, but the nugget that has made some news surrounds the estimated sales figures of the solid gold Apple Watch.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

As for the $10,000-plus, 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition, the report claims Apple’s sales were “in the low tens of thousands” of units, with “few after the first two weeks.” The line was discontinued in September 2016 after just 16 months and, humorously, the gold models are now stuck on watchOS 4 and below.

Even with the lowest possible numbers within this framing — 10,000 units sold of a minimum $10,000 product — that still means Apple made a hundred million dollars on the first-generation Edition. I’m not making a judgement on whether this is good, obviously, but it’s noteworthy.

Anecdotally, I occasionally search eBay and Chrono 24 out of idle curiousity. I’ve never seen a gold Edition for sale.