What does “flop out of the box” mean? Is it a popular turn of phrase?

Solution 1:

The idiomatic part of the sentence is out of the box:

• (idiomatic, of a product) Immediately, without intervention from the customer.

  • This software has to work out of the box, without any fancy installation. (Wiktionary)

• An out of the box feature or functionality, particularly in software, is a feature or functionality of a product that works immediately after installation without any configuration or modification.

  • For instance, if connecting to the internet through wifi immediately after installing the operating system requires no driver installation or configuring, the wifi is said to "work out of the box". This is an important distinction, since several wifi adapters do not necessarily function properly without some user participation in installation or setup. (Wikipedia)

• In a tech/software context I'd say that the expression is fairly popular!

Ngram- work out of the box.

To flop:

• (intr) to fail; be unsuccessful: the scheme flopped.(Collins)

So the meaning the author wants to convey is that those who expect the watch to be a complete failure are going to be disappointed because most likely it will be be successful.

P.S.: not to be confused wiht the expression think out of the box:

• a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel or creative thinking.

Solution 2:

From Oxford Dictionaries (OD), right out of the box is a U.S. expression meaning immediately, from the very beginning. Out of the box here is just a variant of that expression.

And, flop means to be completely unsuccessful, fail totally (OD).

The meaning can also be determined from the context: reviews show that the watch was immediately successful, which is disappointing to some who hoped or expected otherwise.

Solution 3:

"Flop" can mean to fail .... the word "flop" is common enough. "flop out of the box is a phrase that I have never heard before but it is easy to figure out its meaning.

So, in this context, the phrase "flop out of the box" means to fail immediately, or fail when it was first seen.

With the case of the Apple watch, Apple finally showed the watch several weeks ago after many years of talking about it. When it was shown to the public, the feeling (among Apple product users anyway) was that the watch might be a winner. There were no obvious flaws during the introduction. Now the product may fail in the future if sales do not show acceptance of the product. But so far many people think there is a possibility for the product.