Microsoft Band Back in Store After High Demand

It’s hard to quantify Microsoft’s sales on tablets and other hardware, because every time a product “runs out of stock” they don’t give any information on how much stock was available in the first place. Microsoft Band – the new wearable health tracker – went out of stock earlier this month. Fans of Microsoft alluded this was due to high demand, but it could’ve been due to low stock initially; we don’t know.

Whatever the case, the Microsoft Band is back and available online. The fitness band is $199.99 and comes in three sizes. Microsoft tells users to come to its stores to check out the sizes, and stock in-store has reportedly not depleted.

The question really remains as to how many units Microsoft sold. BlackBerry recently announced they were out of stock on the BlackBerry Passport, when asked about stock, the CEO John Chen said 200,000 units had been sold, hardly amazing numbers. This makes us wonder just how many Microsoft Band units were developed for the first month. Was demand high, or did Microsoft simply underestimate the interest in the first week, and not manufacture a few thousand more units?

Considering the sales of FitBit and Jawbone’s fitness bands, we cannot see sales going anywhere above 100,000, and even that is a push. Considering the large amount of manufacturing Microsoft can achieve, it seems a bit wrong to say “we’re out of stock” due to high-demand, when in reality the company simply underestimated interest.

To put it into perspective, Apple has not run out of stock with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, even though they sold 40 million units. When the Apple Watch launches, you can bet Apple will have enough units to last a good few years, to make sure there is never a time where customers cannot buy the device.

The tactic of saying a device has high-demand might work on some, but realistically it makes more customers question where all the demand is coming from, especially with a product like the Microsoft Band.