Apple Watch market share falling amongst fitness trackers, holding steady with smartwatches

New IDC data examining the wearables market shows a growing overall presence, with fitness bands claiming 85 percent of Q3 sales, but little impact demonstrated from the late-quarter Apple Watch refresh in its short availability.

Leading the market was Fitbit with a 23 percent share, heralded by a refresh of the Charge family of devices. Xiaomi held 16.5 percent, with most of its sales in China, while Garmin took 1.3.

The more expensive Apple Watch held a narrow lead over Samsung with 4.9 percent of the market. Samsung controlled 4.5 percent with a mixed product line of both fitness bands and smartwatches.

IDC claimed that Apple's downturn for the quarter was mostly attributable to an "aging lineup and an unintuitive user interface." The firm's analysts argued that Apple's success in the category will be at best "muted" because of continuing challenges in the category.

However, narrowing down to the smartwatch category specifically, Apple maintained a commanding lead over all its competitors, falling only slightly to 41.3 percent of the market. In that segment, Garmin was a distant second place at 20.5 percent, with Samsung pulling in third at 14.4 percent.

Apple's third-quarter numbers were largely unaffected by the release of the Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watch on Sept. 7, with only a few days of availability at the end of the quarter.

Overall, IDC expects that app-running smartwatches like the Apple Watch will "continue to struggle in the near term" versus far less capable — but cheaper — fitness trackers.

56 Comments

NY1822 620 comments · 8 Years

About 7 years ago

how many days in Q3 are these numbers tallying?

christopher126 4366 comments · 16 Years

I love my first gen. Apple Watch for running...two taps and I'm ready to run. I bought it to measure my heart rate to keep in the Max fat-burning zone.

I don't carry an iPhone so I'm not fooling with it or EarPods.

I just wish I could have one or two readings in large text like the large text time display. The current displays are a little too crowded with small hard to read sized fonts.

All I need is Distance and current pace. Mainly current pace. It beeps at every mile, and the half-way point. It auto stops when I stop to tie a shoe or drink and auto starts when I start running again.

I'll eventually get the second gen w/ GPS, but for now, the 1st gen is just excellent. I run on trails in the Arizona desert that are known posted distances and I find the Apple Watch to be accurate to about 5%-10% which is fine by me...It's about "time on the trail," not so much about speed.

blastdoor 3565 comments · 15 Years

I'm actually not too worried about this.

The first gen watch was a little off target, but I think they righted the ship with version 3 of the OS and the current hardware lineup.

If they can just keep pushing the product forward I think they'll do fine.

The problem is -- that's a big "if". It seems difficult for Apple to continuously push multiple product lines forward at once. Only the iPhone consistently gets annual updates.

Mikeymike 102 comments · 8 Years

"Holding steady"
Yeah, uh. That's awesome.

mac_128 3452 comments · 12 Years

blastdoor said:

I'm actually not too worried about this.

The first gen watch was a little off target, but I think they righted the ship with version 3 of the OS and the current hardware lineup.

If they can just keep pushing the product forward I think they'll do fine.

The problem is -- that's a big "if". It seems difficult for Apple to continuously push multiple product lines forward at once. Only the iPhone consistently gets annual updates.

While I agree, I do think it took too long to get a second model out. We've been looking at the exact same design since September 2014, which despite being a substantial improvement over Series 1, nevertheless lends to the perception it's an old model offering nothing new. And, I have believed since the beginning that the Apple Watch did too much, and things that most people are clearly not buying smart watches for, requiring a more complicated interface for some. Combined with a relatively high price compared to the fitness trackers most people seem to be opting for, and it becomes something of a luxury for the mass markets Apple needs to woo in order to make this thing as successful as their other product lines. But they are laying the groundwork for a big leap forward. If rumors are accurate, and the Apple Watch gains LTE and independence from the iPhone, it will likely take on a whole new life for some. A round watch, as alluded to by patent filings, will also help put the spotlight back on design as well, and keep pushing the innovation factor, over the fitness bands which seem to carry the bulk of the focus. And let's not forget Apple's health factor. The Trump presidency might well help Apple in that regulatory barriers to adding health features to the watch could be dropped, allowing them to bring truly useful features to the watch. I would generally trust Apple to thoroughly test their devices more than most vendors given the resulting lack of government regulation, and that will give Apple a leg up too in that area, since obviously Fitbit will benefit from the same deregulation.