According to the latest Worldwide Wearables Quarterly Tracker released by International Data Corporation (IDC), the global wrist-worn device market shipped 139-million units in the first three quarters of 2024, a year-over-year decline of 1%, mainly due to the homogenisation of competition and market saturation in India and the US.
China’s wrist-worn device market shipped 45,8-million units, a year-over-year increase of 20.1%. As the largest market for wrist-worn device shipments, China led the global growth.
The wrist-worn device market includes smartwatches and wristband products. Among them, the smartwatch market will ship 112,2-million units globally in the first three quarters of 2024, a year-over-year decrease of 3,8%.
China’s smartwatch market shipped 32,9-million units, marking a year-over-year increase of 23,3%.
The wristband market shipped 26,8-million units globally in the same period, a year-over-year increase of 12,7%. China’s wristband market shipped 12,9-million units, showing a year-over-year increase of 12,6%.
In the first three quarters of this year, Huawei ranked first in cumulative shipments in the global wrist-worn market, with significant year-over-year growth. In the third quarter, Huawei’s new watches GT5 and GT5 Pro, as well as the second-generation blood pressure monitor WATCH D2, were launched, featuring the TruSense System for the first time, improving the convenience of health monitoring experience and the richness and accuracy of monitoring data. Since the beginning of this year, Huawei has achieved continuous and stable growth in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa markets by strengthening its localization strategy and building a global brand image.
With the launch of the new Series 10, Apple’s smartwatch temporarily returned to the first place in the wrist-worn market in the third quarter. However, with the fierce competition of smartwatches worldwide, Apple has been challenged by products from more price segments in the wrist-worn business. Although Apple Watch still ranks first in the global smartwatch market, it still needs to introduce more innovative designs to continue to lead the industry.
In the third quarter, the new Xiaomi Band 9 was launched and brought a good market response, and its products made many upgrades in screen brightness, battery capacity, and sports health functions, which significantly increased Xiaomi’s overall wrist-worn market shipments. In addition, the Xiaomi Watch S series has also ushered in iterations and continues to make efforts to the mid-to-high-end market. The outstanding performance of Xiaomi’s mobile phone and vehicle business also helped its brand lift and voice in the wrist-worn market.
Samsung’s 7th generation products were shipped in the third quarter, driving its continued growth this year. In addition, the launch of the new Ultra fills its gap in the high-end smartwatch market. The FE version increased its shipments in the third quarter, becoming the entry-level layout product of its smartwatch. Combined with the wristband product Fit3 launched at the beginning of the year, Samsung has further subdivided its product line layout this year, fully covering the wrist-worn market from wristbands to smartwatches, bringing more choices to consumers and effectively improving its overall shipments.
BBK mainly deals with kids’ watch products in the wrist-worn market and ranks first in China’s kids’ watch market. In addition, on the basis of the continuous growth of the Chinese market, BBK is also actively expanding overseas emerging markets and strengthening channel cooperation and expansion in many countries and regions through the overseas brand IMOO.