Data shows Apple Watch owns 33.5% of the market

May 28, 2021 09:35 GMT  ·  By

Apple keeps ruling the smartwatch market, and according to new data shared by Counterpoint Research, its lead has increased from 30.3% in the first quarter of 2020 to no less than 33.5% in the same quarter of this year.

In other words, Apple Watch not only that is the number one smartwatch on the market, but it keeps increasing its lead, as both Huawei and Samsung are far behind in the second and third places, respectively.

Huawei is currently holding an 8.4 percent market share, while Samsung comes next with 8.0 percent.

“Apple maintained its leadership position, catalyzing the overall market growth by recording a 50% YoY increase in the demand for the new Series 6 models. As a result, Apple saw its market share climb by 3% points. Samsung’s shipments also rose 27% YoY, with the popularity of the Galaxy Watch 3 and Galaxy Watch Active series. But the South Korean vendor’s growth was below the market average and it saw a small dip in its market share. Huawei continued to lose share compared to a strong quarter a year ago,” Counterpoint explains in the new data.

The Wear OS struggle

Counterpoint notes that Wear OS has a hard time growing its market share, pretty much because of its limited set of features, which in turn, has led to poor adoption overall.

“In terms of smartwatch OS platforms, Apple’s WatchOS captured more than a third of the market with a growing attach rate to its base of billion iPhone users. Google’s Wear OS has not yet achieved such success in smartwatches. This is because most of the major smartwatch brands have developed and installed their own proprietary OS (like Fitbit OS, Tizen and Garmin OS). Further, Wear OS has been lacking behind in terms of features, battery optimization and chipset support. This has limited its share to a mere 4% of the global smartwatch market,” the research notes.

Wear OS, however, will soon get a second chance as none other than Samsung is ready to adopt the platform, essentially giving up on its very own Tizen for Google’s platform on its next-generation Galaxy Watch.