Fitbit fights back at Apple in the smart watch market

The latest smart watch numbers from analyst firm Counterpoint reveal Apple is still the dominant player but Fitbit is giving it a run for its money.

Total global smart watch shipments grew 37% year-on-year but it’s rapidly turning into a two horse race. Apple hijacked the market as soon as it took the segment seriously but its initial success seemed to stall. Meanwhile Fitbit more recently made the strategic decision to diversify beyond fitness bands and that move seems to have paid dividends.

Apple still dominates with a 41% of global shipments, but that’s down from 48% a year ago. Meanwhile Fitbit has managed to propel its share from 8% a year ago to 21% in Q2 2018, thanks to the apparently popular Versa smart. Everyone else is miles behind, with one-time leader Samsung now bordering on irrelevance.

“Back in Q4 2017, Apple stepped up its strategy in the smartwatch segment by enhancing the features of smart watches into broad-based functionalities, including some health and fitness tracking capabilities,” said Satyajit Sinha of Counterpoint. “Moreover, Apple is catalysing the trend of ‘smart watch as a standalone wearable device’ with adoption of cellular connectivity, which is driving the new wave of cellular connected wearables globally, great news for mobile operators.”

It doesn’t look like the market got the memo about standalone smart watches, however. As Sinha’s colleague Neil Shah notes, people seem reluctant to pay the premium just for the opportunity to talk to their wrist like a nut-case.

“Despite initial hype and traction of cellular based Apple Watch Series 3 in the first two quarters, Apple iPhone users are actually choosing the Series 1 as a non-cellular option over Series 3 non-cellular model which is surprising to many industry watchers,” said Shah. Not all industry watchers mate. The strong inference here is that Apple hasn’t done much to improve on the Series 1 other than whack in an expensive and largely redundant modem.

As indicated the Apple Watch Series 1 is the best selling model, followed by the Fitbit Versa. Given that Chinese vendor Amazfit has the third best selling brand despite only having a 4% total market share, that implies these two models are by far the biggest sellers. Unsurprisingly the Fitbit Versa is significantly cheaper than any Amazon Watch, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see it continue to grab share in the coming quarters.