Apple to Close Its Last Watch-Exclusive Store in May

Apple will shut down its last of the three Apple Watch-exclusive stores - located in Tokyo - it built when it launched the wearable in 2015.

On May 13, the last Apple Watch-exclusive store will close its doors. Twitter user Shotaro Akiba has shared a photo on the microblogging platform showing the department store's announcement.

Apple had shut down the other two stores in London and Paris last year.

According to 9to5mac, the shop held a sale in which it was selling the remaining Apple Watch Edition inventory for as little as $700 (roughly Rs. 46,400).

These 18-karat gold watches were sold for at least $10,000 (roughly Rs. 6.62 lakhs) and as much as $17,000 (roughly Rs. 11.25 lakhs) when they first became available, the report said.

In recent months, high-profile applications, including Instagram, Amazon, Google Maps and Twitter, pulled out their apps from the WatchOS.

Driven by Apple Watch Series 3 shipments, the Cupertino-headquartered giant shipped a record 18 million Watch devices in 2017, an increase of 54 percent compared to the previous year.

"The Series 3 was the key growth driver, as total shipments of the latest version of Apple's Watch were just under nine million, making up nearly half of all shipments in 2017," Singapore-based market research firm Canalys said.

Apple's shipments in the fourth quarter of 2017 grew by more than 32 percent over the fourth quarter of 2016 to eight million, the highest-ever number of shipments in a single quarter for any wearable vendor.