While the Tame Apple Press and a big chunk of analysts sung praises for the iWatch, claiming it would sell 70 million in its first year. We pointed out that the gizmo was nearly two years out of date and lacked most of the software which would make it moderately useful and if it succeed it was a triumph of user stupidity and marketing.

Lately analysts have been slowly withdrawing the enthusiastic sales figures they gave the watch, and now a new survey has shown that sales have fallen by 90 per cent.

Apple is selling fewer than 20,000 watches a day in the US since the initial surge in April, and on some days fewer than 10,000. This is not too bad, but it does suggest that most people who wanted an iWatch have one, and existing users are not managing to win many converts amongst their friends to make it take off. For the record to make the 70 million figure apple would have to sell 195,000 a day.

Data collected by Slice Intelligence show that Two-thirds of the watches sold so far have been the lower-profit "Sport" version, whose price starts at $349, according to Slice, rather than the costlier and more advanced models that start at $549. Apple's gold "Edition" model priced at $10,000 or more has only sold 2,000 of them have been sold in the US.

The figures are based on the electronic receipts sent to millions of email addresses following purchases. The company conducts market research on behalf of consumer-goods companies, among others, many of them in the Fortune 500.  

All up though these figures are not bad, but they are not the sort of numbers which Apple needs to convince its investors that it can make mega sales any more.  With sales drying up in China, Jobs mob will not have a good bottom line this year.