The Smartwatch Market in 2022 - More growth, more Apple

Who wants a normal watch in 2022? The answer is clear - less and less people. Barring a brief period of stagnation in 2020 (in large part, due to the COVID-19 pandemic), the smartwatch market has consistently been one of the biggest performers in the tech world.

A dedicated report published by Counterpoint Research provides some interesting insights into how the smartphone market is developing. For the 3rd year in a row, the smart wearables market has registered double-digit growth. In the first quarter of the year, growth amounted to 13% on a year-on-year basis. This much was expected.

Things start to become interesting when one considers the breakdown on the individual market shares. Once again, unsurprisingly, Apple reigns supreme with a 36.1% market share.

This dwarfs the numbers that Samsung pulled in, the company with the second-highest percentage of market share. At just 10.1%, Samsung continues to lag behind its biggest rival.

The third and fourth places go to Huawei (7.2%) and Xiaomi (5.0%) respectively. The latter is a new-comer to the top 4 of the smartwatch market, recording a staggering 69% year-to-year growth. Funnily though even the market shares of the 3 runner-ups combined (22.2%) still pales in comparison to Apple’s dominant position.

Strangely enough, the only challenge to Apple’s hegemony is in the premium segment of the market. Usually, Apple’s devices have always monopolized the premium product-range. In the smartwatch market, however, this is not the case.

However, Garmin has managed to establish itself as the leader in the premium wearables market. Despite being fifth in terms of market share (4.3%), Garmin is actually third in terms of revenue.

In most regards, there are no big surprises when it comes to market trends in wearables. Apple is still king, Samsung is still the runner-up (albeit very far behind) and growth is still healthy. We are waiting for a major development.