It took quite a while for smartwatches to find their groove and prove they can be practical on their own, not needing a connected smartphone all the time to perform even the most basic tasks, but nowadays, the wearable device market is putting the stagnant mobile industry to shame with a remarkable growth pace.
According to the latest Strategy Analytics report, global smartwatch shipments jumped a staggering 44 percent during the year's second quarter, from only 8.6 million to 12.3 million units. Believe it or not, Apple accounted for almost half of that total, selling no less than 5.7 million copies of its life-saving wearable between April and June 2019, up from 3.8 million back in Q2 2018.
Despite a large number of competitors overcrowding the market, Apple's share surged from 44.4 to 46.4 percent year-on-year, and analysts believe this crushing domination will continue for at least a few more years. Just like in the tablet and smartphone markets, Samsung is proving to be the main challenger to the throne, with the early 2019 release of the fitness-centric Galaxy Watch Active helping the company considerably boost its numbers as well.
We're talking a year-on-year progress of over 5 percentage points in market share (from a 10.5 to a 15.9 percent slice of the pie) and more than double the 0.9 million unit shipment figures posted during the second quarter of 2018 (two whole million now). Strategy Analytics expects the freshly unveiled Galaxy Watch Active 2 to solidify Samsung's global position, especially as Fitbit continues to struggle.
The activity tracker specialist saw its smartwatch sales dip from 1.3 to 1.2 million units, equating to under 10 percent share, compared to a whopping 15.2 percent back in Q2 2018. Apparently, the low-cost Fitbit Versa Lite was not affordable enough (or perhaps not special enough), while the "regular" Versa started getting a bit long in the tooth. Fortunately for Fitbit, a second-gen Versa seems to be right around the corner, but the fitness-first brand will have to resist growing competition from the likes of Fossil and Garmin to maintain its place on the podium.
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