Mizuho Doesn't See Apple Watch Moving The Needle Anytime Soon

• Apple, Inc. AAPL shares have declined 12.42 percent in the past three months, reaching a low of $103.12 on August 24.
• Mizuho’s Abhey Lamba has maintained a Neutral rating and price target of $125 on the company.
• Mizuho’s recent watch survey showed that Apple Watch was still in the early days of market penetration and was likely to have only a limited impact on the company’s performance in the near term.

Analyst Abhey Lamba also said that the survey revealed that “Apple has strong mindshare among consumers but it seems that they are likely to wait for the next generation to purchase. Additionally, price points need to move lower for the watch adoption to increase.”

The survey also revealed that current iOS users showed the highest interest levels in the smart watch category, although Apple Watch also showed meaningful mindshare among non-iOS platforms as well, despite other platform having limited synergies with the smart watch.

“The survey results showed consumer purchase intentions mostly beyond the nine month period. Given that this is a nascent category, we think vendors such as Apple will require multiple iterations of the product to realize momentum in consumer adoption,” the Mizuho report stated.

Lamba also expressed concern regarding the performance of Apple’s stock, against a backdrop of tough compares. “The company could post growth in iPhone shipments in the Dec quarter but it could be hard to grow units for the entire iPhone 6s cycle,” Lamba added.