The Apple Watch has definitely shaken the smart watch scene this year. While it isn’t the game changer we’re looking for, the expensive price tag didn’t seem to stop it from becoming a hot seller.
According to the latest IDC report, Apple has already sold 7.5 million Watches between April and October. You can’t deny that’s pretty impressive considering Samsung only sold over a million Gear smart watches for the whole of 2014. Even Android Wear has managed to ship 720,000 units, with Moto 360 leading the pack.
Despite the impressive figures for Apple, they are still not number 1 when it comes to wearable devices.
Holding on to its #1 spot is Fitbit with its line of dedicated fitness trackers. In the face of heighten competition from its affordable Chinese rivals, they are continuing to grow from 3.9 million units shipped in Q1 this year to 4.7 million shipped in the last quarter. Driving the sales is their popular Charge and Surge, as they continue to increase its presence worldwide. According to IDC, the increase for Fitbit was also attributed to the rise of corporate wellness programs with large corporations providing Fitbit trackers for their staff.
With the entry of Apple Watch, the Cupertino company has managed to catapult itself to 2nd place, putting a dent to the market share of current wearable brands. In Q3, Apple has shipped 3.9 Watches, an increase of 300,000 over Q2 as it increased its availability to more market. Strangely Malaysians are still not getting the Watch, while it is already on sale officially in Singapore, Thailand and most recently Indonesia starting yesterday.
At number 3 for Q3 2015 is Xiaomi with its super affordable Mi Band. So far they have shipped out 9.6 million units for 2015 and they are expected to close the year higher after its recent Single’s Day sale. To revive its popularity, the Chinese company had also announced an upgraded Mi Band 1S that comes with a heart rate sensor while maintaining a low 99 CNY (about RM68) price tag.
Meanwhile, Garmin is still persistent in 4th place with 900,000 wearables shipped, but the real shocker is Samsung as it gets knocked off the Top 5 list for the first time this year. The new entry is a YTC Y01 children watch by BBK with 700,000 sold last quarter. The Chinese based company had sold 100,000 more than Samsung, thus pushing them down to 6th place. With the introduction of its Gear S2, Samsung might just bounce back especially with the current year-end shopping season. In terms of looks, we’d say Samsung has finally nailed it with the Gear S2, but they had cut down the number of features compared to its earlier Gear models.
