Roger Fingas
In the September quarter, Apple was the main beneficiary of a 67 percent surge in global smartwatch shipments year-over-year, delivering 4.5 million Apple Watches according to research estimates published on Friday.
The market grew to approximately 10 million units, giving Apple 45 percent of it, Strategy Analytics said. The company was up 25 percent year-over-year from an estimated 3.6 million units — it should be noted however that Apple has never released official Watch numbers, preferring to make general performance claims instead. For the most recent quarter, it said only that sales of wearables grew 50 percent, contributing to "other products" revenue of $4.2 billion.
Apple's marketshare is down from 60 percent as a result of competition from Fitbit and Samsung. Fitbit is now officially in the smartwatch market thanks to the Ionic and Versa, while Samsung has made inroads with the Galaxy Watch. Those companies shipped 1.5 and 1.1 million units in the last quarter, respectively.
Garmin is the fourth major player and saw its own progress, but has had to fend off growing competition in the fitness space. The firm shipped about 800,000 units, up from 600,000.
Apple's performance was presumably fueled by the Apple Watch Series 4, which arrived in late September. The device has a larger screen, an ECG sensor, and a faster processor, among other upgrades.
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11 Comments
If an Apple product is taking the majority of unit sales then the revenue has to be a huge percentage since the majority of other devices selling in bulk are low-priced and limited functionality, and I'd assume that Apple's profits for the market is very close to 100%.
This "failure" from Apple is probably my favorite product… and it has saved me thousands of dollars in not wanting to buy a new iPhone every year.
One can only imagine the numbers for the next quarter when the Series 4 hits it stride.
Apple Watch has been perfect since WatchOS 3.
When I first purchased my Series 2, the Apple Watch was still a very rare sight in my part of the world. I noticed other people on occasion staring at it, now I see them (Apple watches that is) all over the place, which is a good thing.
My guess is that they will announce certain “milestone” figures. For example I’d give it 12-18 months and they may well reach 50,000,000 ⌚️‘s, which I could imagine them announcing excitedly. I think with the release of the series 4, (which I bought immediately, and am truly thrilled with) they are going to start flying off the shelves now and really build momentum. I had the first model which I’ve worn every day since release, but it’s only now with the series 4 that it actually feels like a necessity. It’s so much more functional, moreover it’s incredibly fast! And really does free one from their iPhone.