There’s no doubt who’s top dog in the global wearables market. Just over 4 million Apple Watches shipped during the first quarter of this year. That’s nearly double the number of Fitbits shipped.
The performance of Apple’s wearable was also up dramatically when compared to the same period of last year.
Apple itself doesn’t reveal how many smartwatches it sells, but Horace Dediu, an analyst with Asymco estimated these Q1 figures.
He said Apple sold just under 3 million Watches in Q1 of 2017, so shipments are up over 25 percent. And the analyst estimates that smartwatch revenue has increased from under $1 billion to about $1.2 billion, year over year.
A total of 46 million Apple Watches have sold since 2015, according to Dediu. Of these, the analyst says “likely 40 to 43 million” are still in use. Apple’s total revenue from this product in the last three years is roughly $16.4 billion.
This isn’t the first time Apple has been on top of the wearables market. It also had the best seller during the holiday shipping season, too.
Fitbit struggling in global wearables market
Arch-rival Fitbit does announce how many smartwatches and health trackers it sells. It shipped 2.2 million devices in the January-March period. That’s below analysts’ expectations.
The company is trying to transition from trackers to more sophisticated wearables. Fitbit said in a statement, “We expect smartwatches to grow as a percentage of revenue, but our overall mix to continue to be skewed towards trackers.” It expects a majority of its smartphone revenue to come from the new Fitbit Versa.
In an attempt to compete better with Apple Watch in the global wearables market, Fitbit and Google teamed up to send data directly to electronic health records.
