Apple Watch leads growing smartwatch segment with 5.7M units shipped in Q2

Apple once again led the smartwatch pack during the second quarter of 2019, shipping an estimated 5.7 million Apple Watch units as it creeps toward a 50% share of the global market.

According to the latest statistics from Strategy Analytics, Apple shipped 5.7 million Apple Watch devices to capture 46.4% of the market during the three-month period ending in June. That result is up 50% from 3.8 million units shipped in the same quarter of 2018.

"Apple Watch remains a long way ahead of the chasing pack and its global smartwatch marketshare has grown to 46% this quarter, up from 44% a year ago," said Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. "Apple Watch has fended off strong competition from hungry rivals like Fitbit. Apple remains the clear smartwatch market leader."

Samsung came in second with 2 million smartwatches shipped, more than doubling its performance year over year. Riding high on recent releases like the Galaxy Watch Active, the Korean tech giant upped its slice of the global smartwatch pie from 10.5% in the second quarter of 2018 to nearly 16% in 2019.

Third place Fitbit saw a dip in sales as its numbers dropped from 1.3 million units shipped in the second quarter of 2018 to 1.2 million in 2019. The wearable industry stalwart saw its share of the market contract from 15.2% to 9.8% over the same period. Earlier this month, Fitbit lowered guidance for its fiscal 2019 on weaker than expected sales of Versa Lite, a device once advertised as a budget Apple Watch competitor.

Overall, the smartwatch market continued to grow during quarter two, with market players shipping some 12.3 million units, up from 8.6 million in the year ago quarter.

Apple is forging ahead in its quest to dominate the wearables segment and most recently posted record revenues of $5.5 billion in a category that includes Apple Watch, AirPods, Beats, Apple TV and HomePod. Apple CEO Tim Cook in an earnings conference call in July said Apple Watch adoption was at record-breaking levels. On a wider level, Apple's wearables business benefitted from an influx of new users and enjoyed a 50% growth rate from the same time last year.

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16 Comments

fred stein 78 comments · 11 Years

About 5 years ago

The top three vendors have non-Android OS'es. So far, only Apple and Samsung have the money and vision to build an ecosystem. Only Apple has OS consistency across devices. Huawei will join the battle soon enough. Qualcomm makes an excellent SmartWatch chip but is already one year behind Apple.

christopher126 4366 comments · 16 Years

Jason Snell (former Editor of MacWorld magazine) made a great observation. AppleWatch has crushed the competition into oblivion.

Rather like what the iPad have done. Where competitors have just given up. He said, he thinks a lot of people were thinking it would be like the iPhone, where Android has a huge market share...but no profits. Except where they harvest and sell your data!

BTW, I'm still rocking my Series Zero for every day wear to complete my circles and running.

Will be buying the new gen., so I can swim, and use the watch so I don't have to carry my iPhone.

Best

P.S. I remember back in the day when Apple iPod had 87% of the iPod (MP3 disc) market...and then Apple introduced the iPod shuffle (Flash based) and had 87% of that market by the following Friday! :) Good times. I miss looking at my white intel iMac, intel white MacBook, my shuffle and original iPhone with my white Apple spaceship router and Steve giving the KeyNotes. Oh well.

mjtomlin 2690 comments · 20 Years

designr said:
One of the things this seems to reinforce is that, as great as Apple is doing with this segment, (smart) phones are where the real money is and will continue to be. As great as these sales figures are this is like 1-2 weeks of phone sales.

Yes. Apple knows this and were smart enough to plan for it... They're selling fewer phones, but still making more money by expanding in other areas, specifically, wearables and services. So even though people are hanging on to their phones a lot longer now, Apple has been able to make up for it by producing desirable "satellite" products that work seamlessly with those phones.

So as long as Apple continues to add and move their iOS platform forward, people will eventually upgrade to new iPhone.

macplusplus 2116 comments · 9 Years

designr said:

One of the things this seems to reinforce is that, as great as Apple is doing with this segment, (smart) phones are where the real money is and will continue to be. As great as these sales figures are this is like 1-2 weeks of phone sales.

The phone seems to be the one device that everyone has. Heck some people even carry two (work and personal). I see lots of people without watches at all and many for whom the classic (non smart/digital) design is preferred. But everyone has a phone and it's with them almost 24/7.

The phone turns out to be the near perfect form factor for 80-90% of people's use cases. It is the true "personal computer." I suspect the watch, simply because of form limits, will never quite get there.

Apple will keep going with this. It's no business to laugh off by any means and the watch brings value particularly its health monitoring features. But from a business POV, it's nothing compared to the phone.

Why do you judge a watch from a business POV? Or, what are the watches not nothing from a business POV? The only ones I can imagine are those purchased by mid-range executive crowd as a status symbol !

AppleExposed 1805 comments · 6 Years

designr said:

One of the things this seems to reinforce is that, as great as Apple is doing with this segment, (smart) phones are where the real money is and will continue to be. As great as these sales figures are this is like 1-2 weeks of phone sales.

The phone seems to be the one device that everyone has. Heck some people even carry two (work and personal). I see lots of people without watches at all and many for whom the classic (non smart/digital) design is preferred. But everyone has a phone and it's with them almost 24/7.

The phone turns out to be the near perfect form factor for 80-90% of people's use cases. It is the true "personal computer." I suspect the watch, simply because of form limits, will never quite get there.

Apple will keep going with this. It's no business to laugh off by any means and the watch brings value particularly its health monitoring features. But from a business POV, it's nothing compared to the phone.

Because Android sells knockoff iPhones for dirt cheap and it's a communications device you will see more sales.

Apple Watch is more of a luxury than a commodity with hardly any viable knockoffs. Because of this people who can afford and Apple Watch(Apple users) will buy one as a companion device.

This is why Android iPad knockoffs and watches struggle because the average android user can only afford the bare minimum(knockoff iPhone) and not luxuries such as android watches/iPad knockoffs/Streaming boxes/you name it.

Don't be surprised if Apple Watch reaches 50%+ marketshare. I predict 80% marketshare eventually unless a very cheap knockoff hits the market. Fitbit is trying to do this.