“450,000,000 of those in the last four years alone were iPhones capable of connecting to the Apple Watch”
That means so far less than 1% of those who can use the watch wanted to order it.
No, Apple has been accepting orders since midnight PST, April 10th. They sold over 2.3 million in the first ten minutes after the Apple store returned to being live online at exactly midnight for devices. . . and a few minutes later depending on where you were for browsers. They expected to deliver that many on April 24th . . . and have several hundred thousand (my estimate was 800,000 would be required for the three day weekend) available for retail store sales. . . but orders kept flying in. . . and Apple Watch sales have been coming in constantly since. . . and back ordered pre-sales have moved into August on some models.
Apple is not saying how many pre-sales they have actually received, but it is far more than 2.3 million.
Yes, 1% of potential customers bought a Watch, with a 3-5 digit price tag, sight unseen, within a few hours of pre-order availability. In doing so, those orders dwarfed (by 2-4x) the total number of “smartwatches” sold in the entire previous year. And if we consider that not every iPhone owner will buy a Watch to go with it, say 20% will buy, that means 1 in 20 likely customers _already_ bought theirs, and the darned thing hasn’t even shipped yet.