San Francisco April 22 (IANS) 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 Engadget reported on Sunday.
Apple had shut down the other two stores in London and Paris last year.
According to 9to5mac website the shop held a sale in which it was selling the remaining Apple Watch Edition inventory for as little as $700.
These 18-karat gold watches were sold for at least $10 000 and as much as $17 000 when they first became available the report said.
Earlier this month 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 per cent 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 per cent over the fourth quarter of 2016 to eight million -- the highest-ever number of shipments in a single quarter for any wearable vendor.
--IANS
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