Smartwatches have only been a thing for a few years, but it looks like they may have already peaked… or maybe they’re just taking off.
But any way you look at it, companies shipped an awful lot fewer smartwatches in the third quarter of 2016 than they did during the same period a year earlier.
According to new research from IDC, there were about 5.6 million smartwatches shipped in Q3, 2015. This year that number was just 2.7 million.
That’s a decline of 51.6 percent.
There is one big factor worth considering: the third quarter of 2015 was the first full quarter of widespread availability for the much-anticipated Apple Watch. So it’s possible that a lot of the folks who’d been waiting to buy a smartwatch did so at that time… and haven’t bought one since.
According to IDC, Apple is still the top company in terms of smartphone shipments and market share… but it’s also the company that saw the biggest declines in both of those categories.
Garmin took second place this year, which is interesting since the company is more commonly associated with running, fitness, and mapping gadgets than multi-function smart wearables.
Samsung, Lenovo, and Pebble took 3rd, 4th, and 5th places, respectively.
The general decline in shipments makes me wonder if maybe most of the people who want smartwatches already have them… or if potential customers are still waiting for a killer app that makes a smartwatch a must-have accessory.
Personally, I’ve been keeping an eye on the space for about as long as it’s existed, but haven’t found it necessary to invest in a gadget that primarily shows me the same stuff I can see by pulling my phone out of my pocket.
That hasn’t stopped companies from pushing out new smartwatches. It seems like pretty much every smartphone maker, and plenty of companies that don’t make phones, has a smartwatch to sell. But it’s starting to look like there may not be a lot of buyers.
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11 Comments on "Smartwatch shipments are down 50 percent from a year ago (IDC report)"
gee i wonder why ?
I agree with you, Brad. Smartwatches just don’t do enough yet for me to justify getting one. I haven’t been able to imagine anything more they could do to entice me, either.
My pebble still works. I really only wanted it for call/text notifications and … to tell time. Still happy with my always on, visible in direct sunlight, 1 charge per week choice.
Hard to believe that wearables won’t become more popular in the future, but clearly the “killer app” just isn’t there yet.
They will seem pretty pointless to me unless google finally releases smartwatches they allow NFC payments. I don’t know what’s taking google forever to implement this.
There’s one huge elephant in the room that nobody ever seems to consider with smartwatches, and that’s the simple fact that since the rise of the smartphone people have abandoned their watches for phones en masse. We don’t wear watches anymore; instead we constantly check our phones. Of course some of us see the convenience of a smartwatch, but many others have simply moved on from a wrist-mounted device.
“We” as in who, exactly? I still have two watches and wear my Suunto Core all day and night, except when I am sleeping. Replacing a Watch with a phone is one step back in terms of usability, consulting a watch for whichever function it provides is nothing more than a glance, a smartphone requires to be taken out of a pocket, handbag, or wherever else, switched on, interacted with, etc.
A smartphone is more a replacement for a dumbed down computer.
I still wear a watch, but of the people I know, I am in a small minority. I will admit that it could be limited to my group or region, but I see people with phones out and bare wrists everywhere I go. A step backwards or not, that’s what I’ve seen happen.
I think you meant that Apple is the top in smartWATCH shipments.
Aside from that it’s not surprising, as many state there’s no “killer app” so far, they’re expensive (and for those that buy on plans it can basically be just as much or more than an actual smartphone) and most of them need to be replaced as frequently as phones since their battery life is basically the same (an advantage of the Pebbles and one reason I was interested in the potential Mirasol screen variants. Plus the hassle of having to recharge every night.
I am not surprised to see Garmin on the map as their fitness trackers were already leaning towards smartwatches than regular watches.
I’d be all over the apple watch if it wasn’t a friggin rectangle. Apple keeps touting their watch as a fashion piece by pushing ads in fashion magazines and having many different bands, but at the end of the day it still looks like a geek gadget. I’ll wait to try out the Google Watch, now that’s a nice one.
When I was always-connected, I dreamed about such as device, as smartwatch. Nowadays I even doesn’t pay for internet on my plan, so…
Yet, I use a quartz watch because they could show me time in middle of roadtrip on bycicle, in sauna or while I’m swimming in a river or lake. Hey, they could work even in -30C (winter is coming!), while most of smartphones turned into dumb in those cold weather, let alone to get smartphone out of warm… and lost some so-needed warm.