Skip to main content

Apple Watch still dominates, but Samsung and Fitbit quadruple shipments

Apple Watch still dominates, but Samsung and Fitbit quadruple shipments

/

Samsung rises into second place during the holiday quarter

Share this story

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Samsung and Fitbit both quadrupled the number of smartwatches shipped in the holiday quarter of of 2018 compared to the same period in the previous year, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics. The growth has caused Apple’s share of the smartwatch market to drop by over 15 percent over the same period, even if it still dominates with control of over half the market. The numbers paint a healthy picture for the global smartwatch market, which overall grew by 56 percent annually, according to analyst numbers.

Despite Apple’s drop in market share it is still selling more smartwatches than ever before. Apple’s shipments increased by 1.4 million units compared to the same quarter in the previous year, for a total of 9.2 million units shipped in Q4 2018, according to data from Strategy Analytics. Samsung became the second largest manufacturer with 2.4 million units shipped (compared to 0.6 million in the same quarter of 2017), while Fitbit increased shipments from 0.5 million to 2.3 million.

Where is Wear OS?

Last year’s Apple Watch Series 4 refined Apple’s wearable formula to finally deliver on its original vision, while Samsung’s Galaxy Watch felt like a fresh start for the brand, even if its execution was more lacking. Meanwhile Fitbit released the Versa, a cheaper second generation smartwatch that improved on a lot of the original’s problems.

With everyone’s sales increasing, The Strategy Analytics report’s only loser appears to be Google. Although it doesn’t produce any smartwatches of its own, the company’s Wear OS is intended to be the wearable companion software to Android. However, all of the most popular smartwatch brands are continuing to stick with their own software instead. There are ongoing rumors that Google might one day produce a so-called “Pixel Watch” smartwatch of its own, but otherwise it seems to be sliding into irrelevance in the wearable market.