Q2 numbers also show fitness bands are dying off in popularity
Smartwatches are ubiquitous today with innumerable brands rolling out their low-cost and premium offerings across the globe. Samsung, for instance, unveiled the Galaxy Watch 5 last month while Apple took the wraps off its premium smartwatches — the Apple Watch Series 8 and the Apple Watch Ultra — earlier this week. Its common practice among smartwatch producers to slash the prices of their existing products ahead of a big release, which is exactly what Samsung did with the Galaxy Watch 4 a few months ago. Combining those extra discounts with already-strong sales performance, Samsung has plenty to crow about to its investors.
The company is estimated to have shipped 2.8 million smartwatches worldwide during the second quarter according to a new report from Canalys. It marks a 58% growth in performance from the same time a year prior. These findings correlate with data published by Counterpoint Research last month, which highlighted the growth of Samsung in the smartwatch segment. All of this happened despite the prevalence of intel indicating a Galaxy Watch 5 launch for late summer.
Overall, worldwide wrist-based wearable shipments witnessed a 2% growth on an annual basis with 41.7 million units shipped. The category of basic wearables (think fitness bands) is taking a big hit in market share as proper smartwatches take over, moreso in the budget end of the price spectrum.
Those basic smartwatches have driven big sales in India: the country continues to be the fastest-growing market for wearables as shipments grew by 275%. Basic watches accounted for 91% of all wearable band shipments in the region with an estimated 5.7 million wearables shipped — volumes surpassing even China.
Unsurprisingly, Apple leads the pack in global smartwatch shipments with 8.4 million moves constituting a 26% slice of the pie. Meanwhile, Huawei’s dramatic disappearance from outside of China has helped Samsung slot into second place — the Korean manufacturer clocks in at 8.9% market share versus the Chinese firm’s 8.6% for the three-month period ending in June 2022.
Things may get even more competitive as Google unveils the hotly anticipated Pixel Watch during its Made by Google event on October 6. We’re not expecting it to make a dent immediately — this is a long game for an upstart brand such as… Google — but we’ll have to see if this Pixel Watch project even lasts the year.