Wearable shipments fell for the first time ever last quarter, and it’s all thanks to declining interest in an aging Apple Watch. Smartwatch vendors shipped just 3.5 million units during Q2 2016, down from 5.1 million units over the same quarter last year.
That’s a decline of 32 percent year-over-year, according to data from IDC. Apple Watch continued to dominate after shipping 1.6 million units, but despite this, Apple was the only smartwatch maker to suffer a decline.
That’s mostly because Q2 2015 was Apple Watch’s launch quarter, and without an Apple Watch 2 at the same time this year, shipments were always going to fall. Fans are now awaiting a new model, which is rumored to be significantly thinner than the existing one.
“Apple still maintains a significant lead in the market and unfortunately a decline for Apple leads to a decline in the entire market,” said Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers.
Apple Watch shipments will rise again this fall, when Apple is expected to introduce that much-anticipated second-generation model. A big update to watchOS will also be made public, and that could also have a positive impact on demand for the device.
Samsung now claims second spot in the list of top five smartphone vendors, while Motorola, which is now owned by Lenovo, is the most popular Android Wear vendor — thanks to its incredibly good-looking Moto 360 series.
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
6 responses to “Wearable shipments fall as Apple Watch gets long in the tooth”
Still selling better than the awful Android Wear…lol. But yes, I am sure most people realize that a new one is on the horizon.
The Pinto sold better than the Yugo, but that didn’t exactly make it a success, AJ. There’s a reason Tim buried the actual sales numbers in the Accessories category along with headphones and spare chargers.
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Regardless of the platform, smartwatches have a ways to go. I have used a number of Android ones and they were fine, but I didn’t see a must have need at the time.
I have been waiting on apple watch 2, and in the past 18 months there are now apps I actually find useful that will help me so its worth considering again.
“Wearable shipments fell for the first time ever … and it’s all thanks to declining interest in an aging Apple Watch”
Wow. The “aging” Apple Watch is to blame for declining sales across the board of so-called wearables? I don’t thiiiiiiink so. If the highest-regarded and popular Apple Watch is not being purchased in the quantities it was last quarter (hardly an important benchmark), I •seriously• doubt it has anything to do with it not having been updated recently. There are many more factors at work, not the least of which is fickle consumers who want the latest and greatest of anything, even when the current model still rocks. As always with Apple, the patient buyer will be rewarded. Just one man’s opinion.
I have an Apple Watch, Asus ZenWatch (Android) and a Microsoft Band 2. None of them are particularly compelling to me and I rarely wear any of them.
The main problem is that unless you’re a twitch junkie and have to always know immediately every and any message, tweet, email… then it quickly become more annoying than helpful. I think a lot of people start out thinking ‘oooh.. that will be convenient – I don’t have to take out my phone to check email’… then realise that they already have their phones out a lot of the time to browse, or game, and most of the advantage of the watch kind of vanishes. Seriously – take a bus or subway train and actually watch people. They’re not tapping on their smartwatches – they’re tapping on their phones. They never let go of their phones – even when they go to restaurants.
Contrary to what the Apple faithful want to believe – none of the watch systems have it right. They’re all fiddly and either end up far too far on the ‘app’ side – where the size of the screen tends to work against it – or too far to the ‘preset function’ side, which takes away from the ‘smart’ aspect. When they aim for the middle – you end up having to move too much functionality back to the phone.
For a lot of media types (and pretty much all Apple fans), the belief was that Apple would magically make a watch and OS that would *prove* that smartwatches were a ‘thing’ that everyone had to have. In the end, they’ve really not done that much better a job than anyone else.
The advantage Apple did have, however, is a fairly large, very loyal customer base who will buy almost anything with an Apple logo on it. Google’s ‘let’s let everyone make their own’ model resulted in no single winner in the Android camp and as usual, astonishingly bad marketing from the OEMs.
The belief now is that this is just ‘pent up demand’. I don’t buy it for two reasons. First, if the smartwatch market is saturated, which is would have to be for such a large drop in sales solely because of pent up demand, then the main market for a new Apple Watch is the existing customer base. That sets a major upper limit on new sales.
Second, to capture new markets, Apple Watch 2 will have to offer something exceptionally compelling to people who aren’t already in the Apple ecosystem. It’s hard to see what exactly that would be, I can really only think of two things that would make the Apple Watch a ‘must have’ device: if the watch could do continuous non-invasive blood pressure and blood glucose monitoring.
Unfortunately, no technology currently exists to do either of these. I’ve done research in these areas and there is one possible technology for blood glucose on the horizon… but it’s nowhere near ready for real world work.
Outside of that, most of the touted advantages of a smartphone (from anyone) are more amusement than essential. I think this is why smartwatches are slowly fading… again.