Apple Watch surges to top of global wearables market with 'market-beating growth'

AppleInsider · September 4, 2018 2:32PM

Apple has jumped past Xiaomi to claim the top spot in wearables worldwide, and is on the cusp of a product refresh in the Apple Watch "Series 4" that should grow the lead even more.

According to the latest edition of the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Wearables Tracker, Apple shipped 4.7 million Apple Watches worldwide in Q2, making it the top wearable company in the world. Apple has a 17 percent market share, enough to overtake the previous leader, Xiaomi, who had 15.1 percent.

Fitbit came in third, with 9.5 percent, followed by Huawei and Garmin. Fitbit and other companies on the list make products in multiple wearable categories, whereas the Apple Watch is Apple's only wearable product.

Meanwhile, the overall wearable market grew 5.5 percent year-over-year, to 27.9 million units. But Apple grew even further, showing 38.4 percent year-over-year growth from the 3.4 million Watch shipments in the same quarter the year before to 4.7 million. Apple brought the cellular Apple Watch to several new countries, including Brazil, Mexico, and South Korea, in June.

"Apple maintained its position atop the wearables market with market-beating growth and continued demand for its LTE-enabled Watch," IDC said in the report. "This makes it a welcome addition to many telco channels worldwide. Now that the company has unveiled watchOS 5, it has also begun to chart out potential replacement cycles as the latest version of Apple's smartwatch platform will be compatible only with Series 1 and later."

A different survey released on August 31, from Counterpoint Research, looked more narrowly at the smart watch category. That found that Apple had 41 percent global market share for smart watches, 20 points more than the second-place brand, Fitbit.

The same survey also found that the Apple Series 1 was the most popular smart watch in the world, with Apple Series 3 coming in fourth. Apple is expected to unveil an updated Apple Watch at its "Gather Round" event on Sept. 12.

Bebe · September 4, 2018 2:50PM

Considering ASP is way higher than competitors, this is really amazing. I can't wait to replace my Series 2 with the Series 4

ericthehalfbee · September 4, 2018 2:50PM

Just wait until AW4 comes out, especially if that leaked picture is correct.

Soli · September 4, 2018 3:03PM

1) Damn! Even the cheap fitness tracker is losing out to expensive smartwatches in unit sales. This is the smartphones v dumb phone all over again after the iPhone was launched.

2) Love seeing the LTE models being such a strong market trend. Even if you don't ever activate it you probably still have access to emergency services which I think is a huge bonus for a wearable.

daven · September 4, 2018 3:03PM

I'm happy with my Series 3. Bought it on a whim and I'm glad I did.

melgross · September 4, 2018 3:11PM

Look at the 118% growth of Huawei, which is in the chart, but not mentioned. It will be interesting to see where that goes. It’s also interesting to note that it’s Apple’s cheapest model that the most popular.

[Deleted User] · September 4, 2018 3:12PM

So impressive to sell more high end models vs the budget models. It's like Lamborghini selling more Aventadors than VW sells Golfs! (equally ridiculous comparison)

Would love an AW3 or 4 but they're tied to EE in the UK which has the poorest signal in my area.

NY1822 · September 4, 2018 3:39PM

Updating from my Series 2....looking forward to the upgraded Heart Rate Monitor and overall speed improvements

AI_lias · September 4, 2018 3:56PM

Sad day. Apple has succeeded convincing a lot of people that it's OK for your watch to only last one day. Reminds me when you had to wind your mechanical watch each evening, except charging your Apple watch takes longer, and maybe you have to also charge it again in the morning, to make sure you start with a full battery for the day ahead.

nunzy · September 4, 2018 4:33PM

Apple doesn't care about market share. Profit share is crucial. Just ask DED.

Rayz2016 · September 4, 2018 4:43PM

AI_lias said:

Sad day. Apple has succeeded convincing a lot of people that it's OK for your watch to only last one day. Reminds me when you had to wind your mechanical watch each evening, except charging your Apple watch takes longer, and maybe you have to also charge it again in the morning, to make sure you start with a full battery for the day ahead.

Sad day. Apple has convinced people that they should sleep for a few hours a night just so they can charge the watch.

Oh, the humanity.

claire1 · September 4, 2018 4:48PM

This doesn't sound right. Others have 46% marketshare? Apple at only 17%!!

Anecdotal:
In the U.S. I hardly see android wear anymore and see a few Fitbits a month. Is the rest of the world really buying that much crap?

Last month I saw about:
50 Apple Watches
2 Fitbits (4 if you count bands)
1 Android wear

Every time I grocery show I easily see 10 Apple Watches, even in lower class 'hoods.

Can anyone outside the U.S. give us your anecdotal estimates?

claire1 · September 4, 2018 4:49PM

AI_lias said:

Sad day. Apple has succeeded convincing a lot of people that it's OK for your watch to only last one day. Reminds me when you had to wind your mechanical watch each evening, except charging your Apple watch takes longer, and maybe you have to also charge it again in the morning, to make sure you start with a full battery for the day ahead.

Does your wind up watch have similar features?

Aloysius · September 4, 2018 4:51PM

AI_lias said:

Sad day. Apple has succeeded convincing a lot of people that it's OK for your watch to only last one day. Reminds me when you had to wind your mechanical watch each evening, except charging your Apple watch takes longer, and maybe you have to also charge it again in the morning, to make sure you start with a full battery for the day ahead.

I get two days out of mine, so even if I forget to charge it at night, it still works the next day.

Do most people sleep with watches on? If you're taking it off, why not just stick it on a charging stand?

These complaints are ridiculous. Comparing the Apple Watch to a mechanical watch is asinine, no better than people ragging on having to fill up cars when a horse can just eat grass.

maestro64 · September 4, 2018 4:53PM

One problem with the stats, Apple which is public trade company and is liable for any false financial claims they make, said the Watch Business grew over 50% in the last year. IDC has it at 38%. IDC can not add numbers or count correctly and when a company shares a public (auditable by the government) information they ignore it.

maestro64 · September 4, 2018 4:57PM

AI_lias said:

Sad day. Apple has succeeded convincing a lot of people that it's OK for your watch to only last one day. Reminds me when you had to wind your mechanical watch each evening, except charging your Apple watch takes longer, and maybe you have to also charge it again in the morning, to make sure you start with a full battery for the day ahead.

Actually it was not a hard task to over come. Most people were using their phone as watch and are use to charging it more than once a day, so charging only one and at know was easy hurdle to get over.

BTW, it not a watch, it more of health improvement monitor with a few extras.

Soli · September 4, 2018 5:10PM

claire1 said:

This doesn't sound right. Others have 46% marketshare? Apple at only 17%!!

Anecdotal:
In the U.S. I hardly see android wear anymore and see a few Fitbits a month. Is the rest of the world really buying that much crap?

Last month I saw about:
50 Apple Watches
2 Fitbits (4 if you count bands)
1 Android wear

Every time I grocery show I easily see 10 Apple Watches, even in lower class 'hoods.

Can anyone outside the U.S. give us your anecdotal estimates?

I see a lot of FitBit and even cheaper fitness trackers, but I see a lot more Apple Watches. Oddly, when I use Apple Pay via my Watch people seem surprised that you can do that. These aren't Watch wearers, but they're not seeing people use their Watch for payments which I prefer over using my iPhone.

AI_lias · September 4, 2018 5:20PM

Rayz2016 said:

AI_lias said:

Sad day. Apple has succeeded convincing a lot of people that it's OK for your watch to only last one day. Reminds me when you had to wind your mechanical watch each evening, except charging your Apple watch takes longer, and maybe you have to also charge it again in the morning, to make sure you start with a full battery for the day ahead.

Sad day. Apple has convinced people that they should sleep for a few hours a night just so they can charge the watch.

Oh, the humanity.

No, they should have their watch on their wrists to track their sleep. It's an important function.

AI_lias · September 4, 2018 5:29PM

claire1 said:

AI_lias said:

Sad day. Apple has succeeded convincing a lot of people that it's OK for your watch to only last one day. Reminds me when you had to wind your mechanical watch each evening, except charging your Apple watch takes longer, and maybe you have to also charge it again in the morning, to make sure you start with a full battery for the day ahead.

Does your wind up watch have similar features?

My point was, even a mechanical watch only takes a few seconds to wind (shorter than charging a Apple watch), if you have to do it every night. And the larger point was, that after Apple convinced everyone that it's OK to have a smart phone with one-day battery life, it does the same for smartwatches. Not cool. Wish this would be a sticking point for more people. (And I'm not comparing mechanical watches with smart watches, not even comparing fitness trackers with smart watches). Since fitness trackers seem to be better in the battery department, I wish Apple would release a fitness tracker with less function and very good battery life. I lot of people would be interested.

spheric · September 4, 2018 5:33PM

Total failure. What was Cook thinking. Jony has his head up his gilded arse. Etc.

Soli · September 4, 2018 5:34PM

AI_lias said:

Rayz2016 said:

AI_lias said:

Sad day. Apple has succeeded convincing a lot of people that it's OK for your watch to only last one day. Reminds me when you had to wind your mechanical watch each evening, except charging your Apple watch takes longer, and maybe you have to also charge it again in the morning, to make sure you start with a full battery for the day ahead.

Sad day. Apple has convinced people that they should sleep for a few hours a night just so they can charge the watch.

Oh, the humanity.

No, they should have their watch on their wrists to track their sleep. It's an important function.

If you've read comments about the Watch you'd know that many wearers do wear to bed to record their sleep habits. There are countless sleep apps for watchOS.

Apple Watch surges to top of global wearables market with 'market-beating growth'

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