Apple maintains its leading role in the market for smartwatches, internet-connected watches.
The sector grew 35% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021, according to the latest findings from Counterpoint Research, a period in which the Apple recorded growth of 50%.
Following the launch of the Watch Series 6 last fall, Apple has seen its share rise by 3% compared to the same quarter of 2020, thus reaching 33.5% of the total market share.
According to Counterpoint Research's 'Global Smartwatch Model Tracker', Samsung has also seen shipments of smartwatches grow (+ 27%), particularly the Galaxy Watch 3 and Galaxy Watch Active, although it still lags far behind the competitor, with only the 8% of the slice. For its part, Huawei continued to lose shares, going from 10.1% in the first quarter of 2020 to 8.4% today. In terms of smartwatch operating systems, Apple's WatchOS boasts more than a third of the market (33.5%), with a rate that increases in proportion to iPhone sales. Google's Wear OS system is only 3.9%, mainly due to the fragmentation that exists in the sector, where almost every brand uses a proprietary platform. In fact, 15.7% are divided by Tizen OS, Wear OS itself but also Fitbit, Amazfit and Huawei.
With a recent announcement at I / O 2021, Google confirmed that from the middle of this year, Wear OS will also incorporate Tizen OS, so Samsung's next Galaxy Watches will run on this software, abandoning the home project for the moment.
Commenting on the announcement, Counterpoint's vice president of research Neil Shah said this is an important move for Google, with the ambition to consolidate once and for all in the wearable device market.