Analyst claims Apple Watch accounted for half of all smartwatch sales in 2018
Apple is expected to have dominated the global smartwatch market in 2018, with Strategy Analytics estimates suggesting the company shipped 9.2 million Apple Watch units worldwide in the last calendar quarter of 2018, up 18 percent from 7.8 million units in the year-ago quarter.
The estimates suggest Apple had a 51 percent take on the market throughout 2018, with whole year shipments supposedly totalling 22.5 million units.
Rival manufacturer Samsung is said to have grown shipments during quarter four, moving 2.4 million units and capturing a 13.2 percent share of the market, in comparison, Samsung shipped around 600,000 units over the same period in 2017.
Apple’s global smartwatch marketshare slipped to 51 percent this quarter, down from 67 percent a year ago, said Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. Apple Watch is losing marketshare to Samsung and Fitbit, whose rival smartwatch portfolios and retail presence have improved significantly in the past year.
Apple has always kept Apple Watch sales private, never revealing numbers during its quarterly earnings calls; however, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that driven by the “amazing popularity”, Apple Watch was “approaching the size of a Fortune 200 company.”