American health and fitness wearable manufacturer Fitbit has continued its Q1 market dominance in the second quarter of the year as well, the research company Canalys revealed yesterday. According to Canalys’ latest research, Fitbit has shipped no less than 3.7 million wearable devices in Q2 2016. To put things into context, the second most successful wearable manufacturer Xiaomi has shipped 3 million devices during the same three-month period while the third-placed Garmin shipped “only” 700,000 units within that time frame.
In comparison to the second quarter of 2015, Fitbit increased the number of its shipped bands by an impressive 36%, which makes it one of the fastest expanding businesses in the industry. Canalys’ research suggests that one of the main reasons for Fitbit doing so well recently is the stumbling of its main competitor Jawbone whose fitness wearables business has an uncertain future. Despite Fitbit achieving these extremely positive numbers, the Android Wear market as a whole is experiencing a downward trend in terms of its shipments in 2016. Canalys’ experts suggest that fully-fledged smartwatches still aren’t particularly attractive to the average consumer. According to them, that’s the main reason why high-end smartwatches are yet to truly break into the mass consumer electronics market. Nevertheless, Canalys’ analysts and other independent experts are forecasting that the shipments of the Android Wear-powered wearables are to increase by the end of the year with the upcoming launch of Android Wear 2.0 that’s slated for October. More specifically, the US research firm predicted that approximately 7.5 million smartwatches with cellular connectivity will ship to retailers by the end of the year.
All in all, while units shipped naturally doesn’t equal units sold, these numbers still prove that Fitbit’s core business is doing quite well. That’s an especially big accomplishment considering the fact that this isn’t exactly the best period for the fitness wearable industry, as evidenced by Canalys’ research. Fitbit’s success can not only be attributed to solid products sold at reasonable prices but also to company’s proactive stance towards the rest of the industry. E.g. less than three months ago, Fitbit acquired Coin, a wearable payments firm whose popular technology will soon be integrated into company’s own product lineup, giving consumers just another reason to purchase a Fitbit device.