Before 2020 and the COVID-2019 outbreak, the smartwatch field was one of the fastest-growing niches. But in the first year of the pandemic, it could barely reach 24% YoY growth. The information comes from Counterpoint Research’s recently published Global Smartwatch Model Tracker report for 2021. In the fourth quarter, smartwatch shipments exceeded 40 million units. This is the best single-quarter result in history.
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Associate Director Sujeong Lim said, “The global smartwatch market’s good growth in 2021 is meaningful in itself, but it is more meaningful in that it makes us look forward to future growth. With their ability to monitor important health parameters like blood pressure, ECG, and SPO2, these devices are becoming popular. Further, the attractiveness of smartwatches as independent wearable devices will increase if more of them start supporting cellular connectivity.”
Top Brands In Global Smartwatch Market
As for the separate brands, Apple kept its first position with a 30% market share. Although this indicator fell 3% points YoY due to fierce competition. On the other hand, its ASP (average selling price) rose 3%. As a result, Apple accounted for half of the total market revenue.
Samsung followed Apple, with QoQ growth of more than 200% in the third quarter. But this was so until the last quarter. As you know, recently, Samsung switched to Wear OS. Of course, this had a serious effect on the company’s performance in this segment.
Huawei performed quite well thanks to the newly-released high-end new models and kids’ smartwatches. However, because of the US sanctions, its shipments declined YoY. Two amazing products the Watch GT 3 and Watch Fit Mini were released in the fourth quarter. So they helped the company to double Huawei’s shipments QoQ in the quarter.
As imoo did not launch any new model in 2021, it’s logical why the YoY result declined. But this brand entered new markets such as Europe, which helped it to remain the unchangeable king of the kids’ smartwatch segment.
Amazfit continued its successful trip in terms of appearing in new markets. That’s why it could record more than 20% YoY growth over the past two years. Its ASP also rose 11%. The company could perform so well because the GTR and GTS models were among the best-selling models.
Surprisingly, Garmin performed better than expected in 2021. If you remember, long ago, Garmin was focusing on high-priced smartwatches for special categories like aviation and divers. But now, it is offering products aiming at classic consumers. In effect, it recorded 35% YoY growth and took sixth place.
As expected, Fitbit showed weak performance in 2021. Apart from the Sense and Versa 3 models in the third quarter of 2020, we didn’t see new models. Therefore, it had a YoY decrease of more than 15% in 2021.
Though Amazfit is usually related to Xiaomi, the latter is introduced through other models such as the Mi Watch Lite launched in the first half of 2021 and the Redmi Watch 2 series in Q4 2021. Due to them, the company performed quite well.
India is the second-largest market in the world. So it’s logical that there is their own brand of smartwatches. In this sense, Noise has been considered to be the fastest-growing brand among the global top 9 brands.
