The Apple Watch is not slowing down when it comes to its dominance of the smartwatch market. According to a new report by Counterpoint Research, Apple Watch recorded an impressive 50% annual growth in Q1, claiming an impressive 33% of the overall global smartwatch industry.
Meanwhile, a separate report from the International Data Corporation said Apple shipped 30.1 million Apple Watches for the quarter, representing an almost 29% share of the market. While the reports differ slightly on the numbers, the take-home message is that Apple is killing it when it comes to smartwatches.
Counterpoint notes that:
“In terms of smartwatch OS platforms, Apple’s WatchOS captured more than a third of the market with a growing attach rate to its base of billion iPhone users. Google’s Wear OS has not yet achieved such success in smartwatches. This is because most of the major smartwatch brands have developed and installed their own proprietary OS (like Fitbit OS, Tizen and Garmin OS). Further, Wear OS has been lacking behind in terms of features, battery optimization and chipset support. This has limited its share to a mere 4% of the global smartwatch market.”
Photo: IDC
Apple has an impressive lead
Whether this changes with the newly announced Google-Samsung partnership announced at Google I/O remains to be seen. Google is giving up on Google Wear OS by combining with Samsung’s Tizen OS to create a new operating system for smartwatches that’s tentatively called Wear. However, while this can be read as two superpowers combining forces to create, well, an even bigger superpower, it can also be read — as The Verge put it — as “giving up.”
It’s certainly a very different scenario to iOS vs. Android in the smartphone battles. With iOS vs. Android, Android quickly overtook Apple in terms of global market share — even if iOS still raked in the bulk of the profit. The smartwatch battle, however, appears to be a different kettle of fish.
Have you bought a new smartwatch in the last year? If so, which did you opt for? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: BusinessWire and Counterpoint Research
