Smartwatches are still very much a niche product. The only companies that are really selling a decent amount of these are Apple and Samsung. While others like Lenovo, Huawei and LG have some pretty popular Android Wear smartwatches, they just aren’t selling in high enough volume. And IDC’s latest report on the wearable segment definitely shows that smartwatches are still a niche product, and the industry is actually in decline, already.
The top five wearable vendors for the second quarter include Fitbit, Xiaomi, Apple, Garmin and Lifesense. Interesting to note that the only company that sells only smartwatches – not fitness trackers – is Apple. There’s also no Android Wear manufacturers listed, nor Samsung who sells both fitness trackers and smartwatches. Apple, actually saw a decrease of 56.7% between Q2 2015 and Q2 2016. While everyone else saw their market share increase. Fitbit shipped 4.4 million units in second quarter last year, and shipped 5.7 million in this year’s second quarter. The most interesting member of the top five here is definitely Garmin. Seeing a 106.7% increase year-over-year. Shipping just 0.8 million last year, versus 1.6 million this year. Still a pretty small chunk of the market, at 6.9%, but that’s a pretty good change over the same period a year ago.
Smartwatches haven’t been as popular this year, as they were in 2015. Even when it comes to new smartwatches, in the Android Wear space, very few smartwatches were announced this year. With the majority of them actually coming from traditional watch makers like Michael Kors, Nixon and Fossil. All of which are having trouble selling their products, however fitness trackers are selling quite well, especially in Fitbit’s case. One has to wonder why? It’s likely because of the fact that fitness trackers are much cheaper than smartwatches. With some of them costing under $100, while smartwatches are typically closer to $300. In addition to that, fitness trackers do have a longer battery life. While smartwatches do need to be charged each night. Not something that most consumers will want to deal with.
IDC has published their report for the wearable industry for the second quarter of the year. You can check out their full report at the source link below.
