Apple drives global smartwatch market up 48% in Q1

The latest global smartwatch shipment numbers from Counterpoint Research reveal strong segment growth driven largely by Apple.

The fruity gadget giant accounts for over a third of the market, so when its shipments increase by 49% year-on-year it’s not surprising to see the whole market grow in line with that. Intriguingly Apple’s biggest smartphone competitors seem to be getting their act together in this smartwatch renaissance. Both Samsung and Huawei gained overall market share as you can see in the chart below.

“Apple Watch shipments grew a solid 49% YoY despite the weak demand for its iPhones,” said Satyajit Sinhaof Counterpoint. “Apple continues to focus on the health-related features like ECG and fall detection in the Apple Watch Series 4. The ECG capability in the Apple Watch is the most desirable feature, according to our latest Consumer Lens survey. Apple has now received approval on its ECG features from healthcare authorities of Hong Kong and 19 other countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

“The heart rate sensor for health monitoring, GPS and pedometer sensors for fitness, and NFC embedded for payment are some of the key integrated technologies. Related use-cases and in addition to notifications with cellular capability are driving the smartwatch adoption. However, limited battery life remains a pain point for consumer’s decision-making process, irrespective of region and price band.”

“Samsung grew exponentially at 127% YoY as the Korean brand’s market share jumped to 11% in Q1 2019,” said Sujeong Lim of Counterpoint. “Its success was due to the latest Galaxy watch series which came with better battery life as well as a very traditional round clockface design. Further, it provides cellular LTE connectivity which gives it an edge over others targeting Android-based smartphone users. It is a great alternative to the Apple Watch for Android and Samsung’s huge installed base of users.

“Huawei’s market share jumped to 3% in Q1 2019 due to good traction for its latest Huawei Watch GT. The striking design, affordability, leveraging the growing ‘Huawei’ brand mindshare, and the smartphone user base is driving demand. Further, Huawei has shifted focus to sell more Huawei branded smartwatches whereas the smart bands are selling well under its Honor brand.”

So it looks like the big smartphone brands have finally worked out how to persuade their customers to buy smartwatches too, presumably helped by actually finding some useful functions for them. It’s still hard to see this as anything other than a fairly niche category for fitness nuts and hypochondriacs though and it will probably remain so until the voice and gesture UIs become so useful that it becomes viable to leave your smartphone at home.