Apple Watch is anything but a sideshow for Apple with 18M sales in 2017

While there might not be quite as much buzz around smartwatches as there has been in the past, this hasn’t appeared to have affected Apple’s plans for its Watch. According to Canalys, the Cupertino giant sold 18 million Apple Watches last year. In doing so, it also set a sales record for wearable sales in a single quarter, moving 8 million in Q4 alone. Apple Watch sales were also up an astonishing 54 percent over 2016 sales.

While the sales of the Apple Watch pale in comparison to the sales of its iPhone, which sold in the order of 200 million over the course of the calendar year for the same period, the total sales of the Apple watch amount to around US$5 billion. That would be enough for Apple's Watch division to creep on to the Fortune 500 list on its own, which helps to give an indication of just how much of a money-making juggernaut Apple has become.

The launch of the Apple Watch Series 3 helped to drive the outstanding sales figures for Q4, which notably added support for a cellular connection for the first time. Despite this, however, it was the non-cellular Apple Watch 3 that comprised 35 percent of Apple’s total sales for 2017, with the more expensive cellular model garnering 13 percent of sales. Like the iPad, which dominates the tablet market, Apple looks to have stitched up the smartwatch market as well.

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