IDC said that the worldwide smartwatch market experienced a round of growing pains in Q3 2016, with sales falling 51.6% from Q3 last year at 2.7 million, although the company pointed out that Q3 last year was the first time that Apple’s Watch was available, while the latest version was only available for two weeks of Q3 this year and that the latest Samsung Gear S3 was announced at IFA, but didn’t start shipping.
Apple remained the main brand, while Garmin’s increase was the result of its focus on fitness and sport. Samsung was slightly up, with one of the few cellular-connected devices. Lenovo (Motorola) suffered because multiple channels had sold out of Moto 360 devices (both first and second generation) and there was a scarcity of its recently released Moto 360 Sport smartwatch. In addition, 3Q16 marks the first time in which Motorola did not introduce a new smartwatch in time for the holiday quarter.
Finally, Pebble was also well down, after another successful Kickstarter campaign in early 2016. Pebble released the Pebble 2 (oddly enough, the third generation) late in the third quarter. The new Pebble 2 is the first watch by the company to include a heart-rate sensor and has an overall focus on fitness.
- Devices like the Fitbit Blaze and Withings Activité are excluded since IDC considers these as “Basic Wearables” that do not run third party applications.
- All other wearable form factors (i.e. earwear, clothing, wrist bands, etc.) are excluded.
Analyst Comment
I’m clearly not the only one that can’t quite see the appeal of the current generation of smartwatches (Are Smartwatches a Product of the Future…?). Smartwatches are probably at less than half of Swiss watch sales, although that market is having a tough year.
