According to sources by the Wall Street Journal, Apple has requested its suppliers in Asia to produce a total of five million to six million units of the three models of the upcoming Apple Watch within the current quarter in preparation for the release of the wearable device to the market in April.
Half of this total production will be for the device's entry-level model, the Apple Watch Sport, while a third of the output will be for the mid-tier Apple Watch, and the remaining output will be for the high-end Apple Watch Edition.
The orders for the Apple Watch Edition, which will feature casing made out of 18-karat gold, will start out small. Apple, however, looks to begin production of over one million units of the smartwatch monthly in the second quarter.
The numbers indicate the high expectations that Apple has for its first entry into the wearable devices market. In comparison, a report by research company Canalys revealed that 720,000 units of devices operating on Android Wear, Google's operating system for wearable devices, were shipped over the second half of last year. The number of devices actually sold, however, could be far less than that.
The production plans of Apple are set based on the company's forecasted demand for its products. The figures in the company's production plan for the launch of the Apple Watch are similar to the early sales for the last major product that Apple released. Sales for the iPad reached 7.5 million units within its first six months after its launch in April 2010.
The Apple Watch Sport will begin with prices at $349. While the prices for the other two models for the device have not yet been announced, it is widely expected that the Apple Watch Edition could be one of Apple's most expensive products, likely topping the $4,000 tag price of a Mac Pro computer.
Taking the numbers, out of the five million to six million units of the Apple Watch that is being prepared for the launch, around 850,000 units to a million units will be Apple Watch Edition devices. If the price of the high-end model is set at $5,000, and if Apple is correct in predicting the units it will sell according to how many units they ordered for assembly, the company would be making about $5,000,000,000 in revenue for the quarter on the Apple Watch Edition alone.
If Apple does indeed hit its expected sales figures according to its production plan, then the Apple Watch would largely blow out the competition from Android Wear devices.
