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Apple Leads The Way As Wearable Tech Charge Continues

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The wearable band market is booming, with shipments up 35% year on year from Q1 2017 compared to the same period this year.

That’s the word according to industry analyst Canalys, who states that a “strong demand for health-centric devices” is driving the market, with an estimated 20.5 million units shipped from January to March 2018.

The wearable band genre includes both fitness trackers and smartwatches and it’s the latter that is proving to be the revenue winner within the category, with 80 percent of shipments being connected timepieces, from just a 40 percent market share.

And, unsurprisingly, it’s Apple leading the way in that field. The Cupertino giant, which launched its third-generation smartwatch at the end of 2017, enjoys an 18 percent share of the overall band market – that’s an estimated 3.8 million shipments.

“Key to Apple’s success with its latest Apple Watch Series 3 is the number of LTE-enabled watches it has been able to push into the hands of consumers,” explained Canalys’ Jason Low. “Operators welcome the additional revenue from device sales and the added subscription revenue for data on the Apple Watch, and the list of operators that sell the LTE Apple Watch worldwide is increasing each month.

“While the Apple ecosystem has a strong LTE watch offering, the lack of a similar product in the Android ecosystem is glaring. If Google decides to pursue the opportunity with a rumored Pixel Watch, it would jump-start much needed competition in this space.”

It’s only Chinese brand Xiaomi that comes close to Apple, with a similar number of shipments (predominantly in its homeland) of its budget Mi Band fitness tracker range. Mi Bands can be picked up for less than $30, so it’s not surprising to see Xiaomi dominating Fitbit in this area – although the American fitness tracking specialist still holds an 11 percent market share.

Garmin are the other big winner, according to the report – with Canalys stating it is now the second largest smartwatch vendor, with 1 million smartwatches shipped in the last quarter.

“Garmin’s transition to smartwatches has been swift as it focuses its GPS expertise on catering to endurance athletes and outdoor enthusiasts,” said Canalys’ Vincent Thielke. “It brought much needed improvements by adding features such as Garmin Pay to the Forerunner and vívoactive series, and now offers onboard music storage on the latest Forerunner 645. While launching services is a great way to build stickiness, Garmin must ensure it continues to enhance them based on real use-cases. The exercise could prove costly should Garmin be the sole driver of such an ecosystem.”

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