A new report from Strategy Analytics has shown that 12.3 million smartwatches were shipped in Q2 2019, which is a year-on-year growth rate of 44%.
In the same quarter of 2018, 8.6 million units were shipped, an indication of the scale of growth at play in the smartwatch space. Another report recently valued the market at £50 billion, suggesting that things are looking pretty good for the connected timepiece right now.
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Of those 12.3 million units, 46% were shipped by Apple, which gives the company a sizeable share of the market. The Apple Watch dominated global shipments with the arrival of the Series 4 last year no doubt helping to bump sales for the tech giant.
Samsung, meanwhile, replaced Fitbit as the second biggest vendor, with 15.9% of the market to Fitbit's 9.8%. That represents a doubling of units for Samsung, which is a significant rise in just a year that goes a long way to indicate the Korean company's improving fortunes in the smartwatch space.
"Samsung is now established as the world’s number two smartwatch vendor," said Steven Waltzer, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics. "Recent new models, such as the Galaxy Watch Active 2, should enable Samsung to solidify its global smartwatch presence for the rest of this year.”
The story is less rosy for Fitbit, which has ceded marketshare to its biggest rivals. It was sitting pretty on 15.8% last year, but only managed 9.8% in the latest report. Given its recent admission that its third smartwatch the Versa Lite Edition didn't sell as well as expected, we expect it will be aiming to improve matters and that could come in the shape of the Fitbit Versa 2.
If you want to dig into the full findings of the Strategy Analytics report on global smartwatch shipments, you can check it out here.
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Reporter Max Freeman-Mills joined the Wareable team as a journalism graduate. He's gone on to be contributing editor at Pocketlint, as a skilled technology journalist and expert.
In addition, Max has written for The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and has done work for Gizmodo UK and Kotaku UK.
Max has his finger is firmly on the pulse of wearable tech – ensuring our coverage is the most comprehensive it can be.
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