Apple continues to expand its dominance of a wearable device market that only gets hotter with each quarter.
Thanks to a price reduction on the Apple Watch Series 3 and the launch of AirPods Pro, Apple snagged 35% of the market share in the third quarter, a year-over-year growth increase of more than 195%.
Apple’s growing success was reported by the International Data Corporation, which tracks quarterly figures on wearable tech.
According to IDC, Apple shipped 29.5 million units, which would include the watch, AirPods and Beats headphones. In Q3 2018, Apple shipped 10 million units.
Chinese brand Xiaomi grabbed the second-biggest share of the sector, shipping 12.4 million wearables for 14.6% of the market. Both Samsung (third) and Huawei (fourth) enjoyed incredible year-over-year growth, but neither surpassed a 10% share.
Hearables continue to heat up
“Hearables have become the new go-to product for the wearables market,” Ramon T. Llamas, research director for IDC’s Wearables Team, said in a written statement. “This began with multiple vendors removing the headphone jack from their smartphones, driving the move toward wireless headphones. It continued with hearables incorporating additional features that either augment or expand the audio experience.”
IDC said smart speakers have provided more tasks for wearables that connect to digital assistants to control features in smart homes.
Last week, another research group, Counterpoint, released a report on hearables, predicting 120 million units will ship this year. Counterpoint expects that number to reach as high as 230 million by the end of 2020.
Ear wear posted the highest year-over-year growth, IDC reported.
Some analysts predicted Apple would sell 3 million AirPods during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
