Samsung Galaxy Watch's Rising Popularity Has Apple Running For Cover
Given how ubiquitous the Apple Watch has become, it is hard to imagine that the whole lineup of products did not even exist as recently as 2014. First announced in 2015, the Apple Watch lineup was targeted as an alternative to smartwatch offerings from popular brands of the time — including the likes of Samsung, Garmin, and FitBit. However, much to the chagrin of these brands, Apple went on to dominate the smartwatch market within a very short span of time.
A closer look at shipment figures from the past couple of years reveals that Apple's market share has been hovering around the 30-35% mark for a long time. In 2020, for example, Apple boasted nearly 33% of the global smartwatch market, dipping slightly to 30.1% the following year. The only companies that posed some semblance of competition to Apple were Samsung and Huawei.
As the smartwatch space continued to evolve, Samsung seems to have eventually figured that launching iterative variants of its Galaxy Watch products wasn't doing good for them in the long run. For the same reason, when Samsung launched the Galaxy Watch 4 lineup in 2021, it did so by making several fundamental changes to the product. These efforts seem to have paid off, and recent reports indicate a healthy uptick in the shipments of Samsung smartwatches over the past few quarters.
Apple shipments slow, market share plummets below 30%
In its recently published Global Smartwatch Model Tracker, Counterpoint reveals that the global smartwatch space showcased a tepid growth rate of around 13% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2022. However, a closer look at the data throws light on some interesting data.
To begin with, Apple — while continuing to dominate the segment in terms of market share — seems to be having a hard time fending off the increasing popularity of Samsung's refreshed Galaxy Watch series. Q2, 2022 also saw Samsung overtake Huawei in terms of market share. The Korean chaebol now commands 9.2% of the global smartwatch market — up from just 7.4% a year ago. Samsung's growth primarily came at Apple's expense, which saw its market share slightly dip to 29.3%.
Other interesting insights from the report include the emergence of virtually unknown players like Fire-Boltt and Noise in the list of the top smartwatch brands. The last quarter also saw India's smartwatch shipments overtake that of China. On the other hand, players like Huawei, Amazfit, and FitBit did not have a great quarter, with some of these brands not even making it to the list of top smartwatch vendors for Q2, 2022.
Given that Samsung recently launched the Galaxy Watch 5 lineup and Apple will likely launch its next-gen Apple Watch products next month, it will be interesting to see how this battle pans out over into the rest of 2022 and all through 2023.