14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has remained the top wearable brand in the first quarter of the year, with its own Apple Watch once again leading smartwatch sales worldwide.
Specifically, sales of wearables improved by 35% year-on-year, according to Canalys, reaching 20.5 million units in the first quarter of 2018. Apple accounted for 3.8 million units, while Xiaomi was pretty close with just as many sold devices.
On the other hand, when it comes to smartwatches alone, Apple Watch is by far the leading choice, and Canalys says the addition of LTE support in the Series 3 model made it truly successful.
“Key to Apple’s success with its latest Apple Watch Series 3 is the number of LTE-enabled watches it has been able to push into the hands of consumers,” said Canalys Senior Analyst Jason Low. “Operators welcome the additional revenue from device sales and the added subscription revenue for data on the Apple Watch, and the list of operators that sell the LTE Apple Watch worldwide is increasing each month.”
No strong rival for Apple Watch with LTE
On the other hand, the company says that Apple Watch also benefits from the lack of a compelling Android rival with LTE support, explaining that Google investing in this side of the market would be a smart move.
More surprisingly, Garmin has become the runner-up in terms of just smartwatches, a market that Fitbit itself is also more active in. With a total share of 11% of all sales, Fitbit is third in the wearable market, and smartwatch sales account for only 24% for now.
“Collaboration between Fitbit and Google on the Cloud Healthcare API will help Fitbit get into healthcare systems, and that is a positive move. But Fitbit’s immediate cause for concern will be satisfying investors that it is selling more wearables, something it may not be able to do,” Vincent Thielke, Research Analyst at Canalys, said.
Garmin and Huawei come fourth and fifth, respectively, in terms of total wearable sales with 7% and 6% of all 20.5 million shipped units.