Apple Watch sales nearly double in a year, as Tim Cook talks competition

It's Apple earnings time (again) and for wearables, things are looking good. Very good, in fact: while Apple continues to pile Apple Watch, AirPods and Beats headphones into one category, CEO Tim Cook confirmed on a call with investors that Watch sales have nearly doubled year over year.

The company continues to hold back on specific numbers for these three products, but Cook added that the revenue for Apple's wearables in the last year was "the size of a Fortune 500 company". Last year, Burlington Stores came in as the smallest of the Fortune list, posting $5.1 billion in revenue, so Apple's achievement in wearables is no mean feat.

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Creative Strategies' Ben Bajarin pegs the Watch sales at around 3.2 million for the last quarter in light of Cook's comments. However, until Apple gives us specific numbers these guesstimations are all we have, and remember that Beats headphones make up a big proportion of this sector.

When asked about competition in the smartwatch market "fading away", Cook responded that Watch units had more than doubled in six of top ten markets. He added that engineering "is hard" and compared building a smartwatch to building a phone. "I'm not very surprised that some people are falling out of it," said Cook, "but we are very committed to it and believe it is a big business and feel that over time it will be larger

Asked about the future of the device, Cook responded, "we have a really great pipeline here" - though wouldn't elaborate any further (surprise, surprise).