Making sense of Apple’s frustrating wearables comparisons

“Apple has a weird way of bragging about its wearables business. Instead of giving investors any type of straightforward data metric like unit sales or revenue (or both), the company instead notes when it reaches various milestones relative to the Fortune 500,” Evan Niu writes for The Motley Fool. “It’s a roundabout way to illustrate growth in the wearables segment, which primarily consists of Apple Watch and AirPods.”
“The most recent reference was just last month, when Apple said its wearables business was ‘approaching’ the size of a Fortune 200 company. Fortune has not released its 2019 list, but No. 200 on the 2018 Fortune 500 was Aramark, with $14.6 billion in sales,” Niu writes. “One can only assume that the next milestone that Apple brags about will be when the wearables business hits Fortune 100 territory. For 2018, that was USAA, with $30 billion in revenue.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Yes, Apple could simply say that wearables is close to $14.6 billion in annual sales, but where’s the fun in that? And, how many analysts and investors, lost amid Apple’s mind-boggling numbers, would realize the sheer size as readily as hearing that if Apple wearables were a separate company, it’d be a Fortune 200 company?