The first iteration of a non-essential device is selling poorly according to a new report. Drawing on numbers crunched by Palo Alto-based email receipt tracker Slice Intelligence, Business Insider puts sales of the Apple Watch down by 85 percent and MarketWatch puts them down by 90 percent since a feverish first week of sales.

You may remember Apple, Inc. from such hits as the iPod and the iPhone. But there have been flops before, such as the Newton, which apparently fell far from the success tree.

Apple has reportedly been selling fewer than 20,000 watches a day in the US since an initial sales surge in April. On some dark days, the company sells fewer than 10,000 watches.

Worse still, the watches that are seeming to sell are the low-end Apple Watch Sport, whose price starts at a mere $349. By contrast, fewer than 2,000 of Apple's $10,000 (or more) gold Edition models have have been sold here, which some might take as a sign of hope for a society less consumed by conspicuous consumption but which Apple analysts are likely to see as troubling news.

In a response to the numbers, also from Business Insider, we're told not to panic. The iPhone, the publication points out, experienced a statistically similar slump after initially strong sales.

Perhaps it's as simple as this analysis: The people who were going to buy the first generation Apple Watch have already gotten theirs. Some, including one brave writer for Re/Code who went for a full week without his Apple Watch, have even deprived themselves of the luxury or abandoned it altogether.

For now, the Apple Watch isn't looking like the next iPhone, but then again, the analogy between a watch and a cell phone is inexact. You don't need one of them.

Previously: So Far Fitbits Seem To Be Out-Selling Apple Watches