Andrew Orr
The global smartwatch market grew in 2022, with Apple accounting for roughly half of overall shipments thanks to strong sales of the Apple Watch Series 8.
The latest analysis from Counterpoint finds that Apple saw growth of 48% year-over-year thanks to strong sales of the Apple Watch Series 8 released in September. It accounted for approximately 56% of overall smartwatch shipments.
The company accounted for roughly half of the market for high-level operating system (HLOS) watches in quarter three of 2022. These are watches running a high-level OS and capable of installing third-party apps.
However, this is a slight drop from the 54% share it saw in quarter two of 2022 due to a slump in North America and Europe.
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Samsung increased its shipments by 62% quarter-over-quarter by launching the new Galaxy Watch 5 series, while its market share in the HLOS segment increased by 5% quarter-over-quarter.
Global Top-selling Smartwatch Brands' Shipment Share by Device Type, Q3 2022. Source: CounterpointGlobally, Samsung was in second place but with a decreased market share, down 2.5% year-over-year.
Noise grew 218% year-over-year to regain the top spot in the Indian market, ranking third in the global market. Fire-Boltt's market share was flat compared to its previous quarter and placed second in India behind Noise.
In fifth place globally, Huawei grew 65% year-over-year but recorded zero shipments in India for the first time since 2018. Oat ranked sixth place as it targeted the entry-level smartwatch market, similar to Noise and Fire-Boltt. It crossed two million in shipments during the quarter.
Finally, Garmin's shipments were flat compared to 2021 but grew 11% in revenue thanks to its average selling price of around $365.
Smartwatch Shipment Share by Region, Q3 2022 vs Q3 2021. Source: CounterpointIndia was another success story as it rose to become the biggest smartwatch market in the world in quarter three, growing 171% year-over-year.
However, it still ranked second place globally behind North America, which remained the most prominent market from quarter four of 2020 to quarter two of 2022. Smartwatch shipments for this market increased 21% year-over-year.
Due to the continued "zero-COVID" policy and the subsequent economic downturn, China fell 28% year-over-year. Its market size decreased for the fourth consecutive quarter.
Globally, the smartwatch market grew 30% year-over-year, but this was driven by basic smartwatches rather than HLOS devices such as the Apple Watch.
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1 Comment
Yeah, I remember the negative blowback when the Watch was announced and released? But that’s the norm for tech blog comment sections when it comes to Apple product releases isn’t it. I know, I keep bringing this up but it needs to be repeated over and over again. Tech blogs are not the real world. Tech blogs are fantasy worlds inhabited by fake techies who think they understand markets, engineering, UI design. I laugh my ass off every time there’s an editorial or member post about what Apple must do to survive or catch up to some imaginary, Chinese competitor. Editorials or comments claiming Apple is behind and it’s too late to catch up and it’s all over, like 5G was going to finally cut the fruit company into little pieces. Sigh