Apple has overtaken Fitbit to be crowned largest wearables vendor in the world, according to Strategy Analytics.
The market research firm claims that Apple sold around 3.5 million Apple Watches in the first three months of calendar 2017. That’s an increase of a massive 59 percent from the 2.2 million units Apple sold during the first quarter 2016. It means the company currently holds 16 percent of the worldwide market share.
By comparison, Fitbit suffered a decline, with only 2.9 million units selling in Q1 2017. That’s down for the 4.5 million units it sold in the first three months of 2016. In other words, Apple Watch is big — but not as big as Fitbit was this time last year.
Also of note on the list is Xiaomi, which shipped an impressive 3.4 million wearables to capture 15 percent market share worldwide thanks to its Mi Band.
Photo: Strategy Analytics
Apple still hasn’t shared any exact sales figures for its Apple Watch, although it’s consistently claimed that sales are strong — and has never used the “hobby” label that it has in the past applied to other non-Mac, non-iOS businesses.
As part of Apple’s recent quarterly earnings figures, Tim Cook claimed that Apple Watch sales have nearly doubled year-over-year. In fact, Apple’s wearables business is now “the size of a Fortune 500 company” all by itself, Cook said during the earnings call. Alongside other Apple wearables like AirPods, the Apple Watch bagged the company more than $5 billion in the last 12 months.
Source: Strategy Analytics
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
2 responses to “Apple overtakes Fitbit to be crowned world’s largest wearables vendor”
It’s hilarious how analysts insist on comparing the Apple Watch to $30 fitness bands to try and minimise its success and yet Apple’s $529 ASP smartwatch now even outsells every fitness band manufacturer.
Apple sold over 12 million Apple Watches in its first year on the market easily passing both the iPod and the iPhone in their launch years. The iPod took 4 years to sell 4m units and the iPhone took just short of 2 years to sell 13m.
Last year, Canalys reported that smartwatch sales grew 60% YoY and the Apple Watch again dominated the smartwatch market with 45.6% market share. The number 2, Samsung only managed 18% with FitBit on 17%, Garmin 3.2% and Pebble on 2.2%. Poor old Android Wear is missing in action.
In its first three quarters on the market, the Apple Watch powered the smartwatch market to surpass the annual sales of the ENTIRE Swiss Watch Industry.
Why can’t we get balanced reporting of this?
I resign working hard at shopritte and at the moment I am generating $75-$97 each and every hour. How? I am working via internet! My employment didn’t actually make me pleasant and so I chosen to take an opportunity on something new…after four years it wasn’t easy to stop my day job however right now I couldn’t be more delighted.>>> SHRTY.LINK/sWPGJq