New data from Canalys today sheds some light on how Apple Watch sales stacked up against the competition during the Q1 2018 (Apple’s Q2). While maintaining its top spot as the most popular wearable maker, Apple also dominated cellular smartwatch sales.
Apple doesn’t break out Apple Watch numbers with its quarterly earnings. What Tim Cook did share for this last quarter was that it saw “Apple Watch growing “strong double digits” to new March quarter record.”
Canalys, however, has some detailed data on wearable sales for the Jan-Mar quarter showing Apple maintaining its lead as the most popular wearable maker.
The report says sales for the entire wearable market grew 35% YoY for a total of 20.5 million units. Apple made up for 3.8 million of those, while Xiaomi trailed very close behind shipping 3.7 million.
However, this data set includes basic wearables and 90% of Xiaomi’s sales are made up of its $27 Mi band. If looking at just smartwatches, Apple Watch would account for a much higher market share.
When looking at cellular smartwatches, Canalys says that Apple is grabbing 59% of sales. We’d venture that in the US, that number would be in the 80% range as “the lack of a similar product in the Android ecosystem is glaring.”
With both Fitbit and Xiaomi considered to be selling mostly ‘bands’, Garmin has slid into second place behind Apple for the most smartwatch sales as it tallied 1 million last quarter.
