Smartwatch market grew to record size in 2018, Apple rules half of it

Peter, 28 February 2019

There were 18 million smartwatches shipped in the final three months of 2018, a new record (up 56% year on year). Half of those were Apple Watches as Cupertino extends its lead over the competition.

For the full year 2018 the shipments rose to 45 million units and, again, Apple accounts for half of those with 22.5 million. Fitbit is a distant second with 5.5 million and then comes Samsung with 5.3 million.

Samsung actually edged out Fitbit in the final quarter as the Galaxy Watch proved popular in North America and Asia, the Galaxy Watch Active looks promising too, according to the analysts at Strategy Analytics (with blood pressure tracking being of particular interest).

Global Smartwatch Vendor Shipments (Millions of Units)	Q4 '17	2017	Q4 '18	2018
Apple	7.8	17.7	9.2	22.5
Fitbit	0.5	0.5	2.3	5.5
Samsung	0.6	3.1	2.4	5.3
Garmin	0.7	2.2	1.1	3.2
Others	2.0	5.8	3.2	8.5
Total	11.6	29.3	18.2	45.0

Global Smartwatch Vendor Marketshare (% of Total)	Q4 '17	2017	Q4 '18	2018
Apple	67.2%	60.4%	50.7%	50.0%
Fitbit	4.3%	1.7%	12.7%	12.2%
Samsung	5.2%	10.6%	13.2%	11.8%
Garmin	6.0%	7.5%	6.1%	7.1%
Others	17.2%	19.8%	17.4%	18.9%
Total	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%
Total Growth YoY (%)	41%	39%	56%	54%

As for Fitbit, the Versa once again proved popular. North America is Fitbit’s key market. Rival Garmin has been feeling the pressure.

Source

Reader comments

Anonymous
01 Mar 2019
pGV

You should try Garmin, man. My Fenix 3 HR is old but still not beaten by other companies. Apple, Wear or Galaxy watches are toys, just an attempt to cram a reworked smartphone OS and hardware into a watch.