Selling consumers on smartwatches has proven much more difficult than selling them on smartphones a decade ago, but the market is gaining traction. Counterpoint Research says that smartwatch shipments grew by 48% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2019, but most of that is thanks to Apple, Samsung, and Fitbit. Fossil, and therefore Wear OS, has seen its market share decline.
Apple is, of course, far out in the lead with more than a third of the smartwatch market. It even saw a slight year-over-year increase to 35.8%. Samsung is in a solid second place with 11.1% of the market. Fitbit grew from 3.7% to 5.5% as well. Huawei’s piece of the pie grew from essentially nothing to 3% thanks to the Huawei Watch GT, which doesn’t run Wear OS.
Fossil’s share of smartwatch shipments fell from 3.2% to 2.5% in Q1 2019. It is far and away the largest manufacturer of Wear OS devices. So, seeing its slide is not good news for Google’s platform. It’s looking increasingly unlikely that Wear OS in its current form will ever be a significant piece of the wearable space.
- Source:
- Counterpoint Research