The smartwatch market still has room to grow and shipments are yet centered around advanced markets such as North America and Europe
The global smartwatch market reached 127.5M units in 2021, with shipments of 42.4M in the fourth quarter, as per a report by Coutnerpoint Research.
As per the report, while Apple’s Watch 7 series launch had been delayed to the fourth quarter, Samsung has boosted their market position in 2021 with the successful launch of the Galaxy Watch 4 series.
Similar to its decline in the smartphone market, Huawei showed weaker performance in the smartwatch market compared to 2020. But it still ranked 3rd in the global market.
Smartwatch operating systems: proprietary OS or RTOS still dominates. These lack the ability to install third-party apps. With the popularity of the Apple Watch, Watch OS holds almost a third of the market.
The biggest change in 2021 in terms of smartwatch OS is Samsung’s move from Tizen to Wear OS. As a result, Google’s Wear OS has increased its share from 3% in 2020 to 10% in 2021.
The smartwatch market still has room to grow and shipments are yet centered around advanced markets such as North America and Europe.
China is the largest market for kids’ smartwatches, and this has helped it rank second in regional markets just behind North America in 2021.
The Indian smartwatch market was similar in size to MEA or LATAM in 2020, but recorded explosive growth of four times in 2021, achieving share of close to 10%.
