Huawei’s impact in the smartwatch world has finally been felt, as a monster Q1 placed it second in the smartwatch shipments stakes.
The figures are from the latest IDC global wearables report, which tracks the market share and shipments of the biggest wearable makers.
We’ve seen a huge move from Chinese manufacturers in the smartwatch space, with Amazfit, Huawei, Xiaomi and brands such as Oppo, Realme and Redmi all producing quality devices at aggressive prices.
What’s more, they beating the likes of Apple and Samsung on things like battery life – and it seems this aggressive approach is finally registering.
All figures have to be tempered by the Covid-19 crisis. It seems that Huawei has been well placed to take advantage, and it grew 118.5% on a year ago, thanks to its Huawei Watch GT line of smartwatches, which has been a rampant success in China and Europe.
Since moving away from Wear OS, Huawei has managed to engineer 14 day battery life, advanced health monitoring features, some really smart fitness and workout smarts and maintain a sub $200 price.
And that’s with an on-going dispute in the US which has seen it frozen out of the mainstream market.
IDC notes Huawei’s strong online sales channels in China are a major reason it’s managed to defy the lockdown, but pressure is mounting on Huawei in Europe which could see further clampdowns on its business.
Apple is still the smartwatch runaway leader, but its market share was slightly eroded down to 25.4%.
And Huami, the parent company of Amazfit, entered the leading pacl for the first time. Amazfit has been hammering the market with a slew of smartwatches such as the Amazfit GTS, GTR, T-Rex and new Amazfit Ares, and it’s managed to carve out a 5.8% market share, up 80% year-on-year.
We've been predicting this kind of impact for a while, and we'd hazard a guess that this is only the beginning. And while Apple and Samsung may well be immune, the likes of Garmin and Fitbit will need to bring their A game to keep convincing consumers to pay more.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.