Apple Watch Used By BuzzFeed To Incentivize Employees

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The Apple Watch has already found a potential customer in the form of BuzzFeed, which recently announced it award employees with the upcoming gadget from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). BuzzFeed is performing well these days, as the company earned revenue of more than $100 million and has more than 700 employees.

Apple Watch for all employees

BuzzFeed’s CEO promised to give employees an Apple Watch if they hit a target of 200 million visitors in a month and 750 million video views. In its memo (published by Capital New York), the company wrote that it is close to achieving two huge metrics. First, the company will go beyond 200 million monthly unique visitors for a calendar month, and second, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures is on the verge of 750 million views in a calendar month.

“If we hit 200 million UVs and 750 million video views, on the *same* month, we will celebrate by buying all BuzzFeed employees worldwide an Apple Watch,” said the memo.

According to a report from Business Insider, the total cost of this incentive will be around $245,000, which would hold true if everyone gets the entry-level version of the Apple Watch priced at $350. Further calculations show that this is .245% of the company’s total revenue.

What analysts expect

Smartwatches have been in the market for quite some time now but hardly received any buzz until Apple decided to release its own smartwatch. Even before its release, the watch has made its way onto Time’s list of the top 10 gadgets of 2014.

Separately, in a recent research report, Stifel analyst Aaron Rakers said he expects Apple to deliver 19.6 million units in calendar 2015 at an average selling price of around $490 in 2015. In 2016, Rakers is estimating 27.8 million units with $13.1 billion in incremental revenue and an initial gross margin of 40% on the Apple Watch.

Rakers said, “We believe Apple Watch will drive a deeper debate on Apple’s vision going forward focused not only on use cases, but also positioning as an aesthetic fashion piece for a broad audience.”

Rakers’ report noted how the Apple Watch will reshape Apple’s brand. The analyst added that 2015 shipments could add up to 6% of Apple’s installed base. The iPad had about 35% of the company’s installed base in the same launch time frame.

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