Rising fear of recession, inflation, consumer austerity or the reason may be any, but the recent report published by Canalys suggests that smartwatch demand declined drastically. Simply say, wearable market is badly hit in Q4 2022. Apple is leading the charts, while Google bags 2nd and Samsung slides down to 5th position in the latest global smartwatch market analysis.
The report reveals that the shipment of wearable band market declined by 18% that is 50 million unit, whereas smartwatch category has also witnessed a dip of 17% in the same quarter. This was the ninth decline consecutively in a row with a huge 43% drop, while a minor growth of 3% was registered in basic watches category.
Talking about vendors who tops the chart is Apple. The brand is leading smartwatch category and wearable band inclusively, however declined by 17% in comparison with Q4 2021. While Google saw a fall of 25%, still managed to secure second position due to growth attained with Pixel Watch launch.
The big shots including - Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei have seen big losses. Especially Samsung tumbled down to fifth position with fall by 35% in fourth quarter. According to Canalys, reason was “The dividend from the WearOS migration dwindled, and it was further limited by the iterative update of the Galaxy Watch 5 series.”
Even after the fall in quarter, Samsung, Apple and Huawei managed to sustain annual growth, giving smartwatch grid a reason to witness mild growth in the year of 2022.
Overall, in 2022, smartwatch market saw 3% growth, basic watches 21%, but the bands fell by straight 39%, taking overall wearable band market to slid down by 5%.
Cynthia Chen, Canalys Analyst said, “The wearable band market is expected to grow at a modest 2% in 2023.” He further added, “While we expect basic bands to continue declining, basic watches and smartwatches will grow, but growth will be capped below 10%. Vendors remain vigilant and will emphasize quality rather than quantity given some recovery in consumer spending.”
Now the analyst company Canalys estimates that smartwatch will perform better with 8% hike than the 6% minor growth of basic watches. Development ahead will be focused on smartwatch OS, as the features, shapes, sizes and use cases really increases interests to today’s consumers in advanced watches.
