Apple Watch Nabs 75% of Global Smartwatch Market

Consumer Electronics

Published: July 22, 2015 1:40 pm

Last Updated: April 27, 2020 4:25 pm

While Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) does not want to give a lot of specific information about sales of its new Apple Watch, that does not stop the rest of us from speculating what sales of the device might have been in the second quarter. One research firm has some good news for Apple.

Strategy Analytics reported Wednesday morning that the global smartwatch market in the second quarter reached a total of 5.3 million units, up more than 450% compared to the second quarter of 2014. The big difference is due to the Apple Watch, which Strategy Analytics credits with capturing 75% of smartwatch sales last quarter.

Neil Mawston, executive director at the research firm, said:

We estimate Apple Watch shipped 4.0 million units and captured a dominant 75 percent smartwatch market share worldwide in Q2 2015. Apple Watch launched in sixteen major countries and saw decent take-up from iPhone loyalists in the United States and elsewhere. Apple Watch has clearly raised the bar for the global smartwatch industry. The ball is now in the court of rivals, like Samsung, to respond.

Samsung posted the second-highest share with 8%, having shipped some 400,000 watches. Strategy Analytics does not list other brands by name.

Apple began taking orders for its smartwatch on April 10 and shipping them about two weeks later. As TechCrunch noted Wednesday, on Tuesday’s conference call Apple’s chief financial officer said that the Apple Watch accounted for “well over 100%” of year-over-year revenue growth of $874 million in the company’s “other” revenue category.

So, how much is that? If Strategy Analytics is right, 4 million Apple Watches at an average price of $500 works out to $2 billion. That is not exactly trivial, but note that the company reported nearly $50 billion in total quarterly revenues.

In terms of units, the Apple Watch far outsold the original iPhone, at least if Strategy Analytics is right about the sales. And we have all seen what a monster the iPhone is now. We plan to wait before we declare the Apple Watch to be the next iPhone — or even the next iPad.

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