The wearable sector of the mobile device market is one which is seeing significant momentum of late. While many manufacturers have already released a smartwatch, fitness tracker or similar, some are already on their second and even third generation devices. With IFA closing in, this looks to be a trend which is likely to continue with a number of top-name manufacturers expected to drop their latest wearable offerings at the event. Well, to provide some insight on to how the wearable market is doing right now, IDC has released a report detailing the state of the wearables market for the second quarter of this year. While the figures themselves are interesting enough, their comparison to the same quarter in 2014 provide some real context to how the market is shaping up.
In terms of the figures, needless to say, Apple were the big winners for the quarter and especially when compared to the same time last year. Apple’s Q2 2015 figures showed they occupied 19.9-percent of the market with 3.6 million units shipped. Keeping in mind, they did not have a product in 2014, this means the previous year’s figure was a flat zero. Interestingly, Xiaomi were not that far behind Apple. Like Apple, Xiaomi also had no market share in 2014 and saw their Q2 2015 figure rake up a very respectable 17.1-percent, equating to 3.1 million devices. IDC make note that this is largely due to their aggressive pricing strategy but also suggested it could have been higher if their distribution channels were more comprehensive. In terms of Fitbit, who did remain the market leaders in the last quarter, due to the influx of Apple and Xiaomi, their share did drop down from 30.4-percent to 24.3-percent. Although their share dropped, it is important to note that their volume shipped was considerably higher in Q2 of this year with 4.4 million shipped compared to only 1.7 million last year. Just the massive injection of units due to Apple and Xiaomi, their market share decreased.
This was also a factor which had an effect on both Garmin and Samsung. Due to the massive impact from Apple and Xiaomi, both Garmin and Samsung saw their market share decrease considerably. For Garmin, their share dropped down from 8.9-percent to 3.9-percent. More worryingly for Samsung, their share dropped from 14.3-percent down to only 3.3-percent. What will be of even greater concern for Samsung, is that the figures suggest of the top 5 they were the only company to see a shipping volume drop as well as a market share drop. Compared to 2014 where Samsung shipped 0.8 million units, this year’s second quarter figure was only 0.6 million. In fact, IDC note that Samsung only barely held their position in the top and only “narrowly edged out Huawei and Jawbone“. The reason given for their decline was attributed to the limited potential reach Samsung wearables offer due to their “reliance on Tizen” and general limited device compatibility. Not to mention, IDC made a note that the upcoming release of the Gear S2 from Samsung will need to be watched carefully to see if this trend continues.
