Apple takes top spot in global wearables market: IDC report

For the first time, Apple is the single biggest shipper of wearables, selling 8 million in the last quarter of 2017.

File Photo: Reuters

New Delhi: US tech-giant Apple’s introduction of the Apple Watch Series 3 in September 2017 is slowly but surely cornering the wearables market. With eight million shipments in the fourth quarter, Apple has become the leader in the global wearables market, a report by International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker has said.

In the fourth quarter, Apple shipped eight million wearables with a 21% market share and 57.5% year-over-year growth, the IDC report said.

According to the IDC report, the fourth quarter of 2017 was the first quarter that Apple held the market leader position all to itself after spending several quarters close behind Fitbit or Xiaomi. 

Apple is catching the market at the right time with many users of basic wearables moving on to smartwatches and cellular connectivity (available on select Series 3 Watches) is earning a warm reception among end users, the report said.

The late-year push of eight million units separated Apple from the competition to emerge as the overall leader of the wearables market for the year, the report added.

"User tastes have become more sophisticated over the past several quarters and Apple pounced on the demand for cellular connectivity and streaming multimedia," Ramon T Llamas, Research Director for IDC's Wearables team, said in a statement.

The Series 3 of the Apple Watch features wireless LTE connectivity, where customers make phone calls or send text messages from the watch without needing to have an iPhone nearby.

The ability to make calls with a wristwatch has captured the imagination of tech enthusiasts at least since it was prominently featured in "Dick Tracy", the comic about a private detective who, starting in 1946, used calls from his wrist to help bust bad guys.

The top five wearables companies for the fourth quarter of 2017 are Apple followed by Fitbit, Xiaomi, Garmin and Huawei.

(With agency inputs)