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IDC: Apple Watch sales hit 4.1M in Q4 making Apple #2 in wearables behind Fitbit

Apple-Watch-IDC-sales

IDC is out today with its latest data on the wearable market — both smartwatches and more basic activity trackers— and within we get a look at Apple Watch sales for the fourth quarter of 2015.

Closely mirroring other recent reports, IDC puts Apple Watch sales at approximately 4.1 million units during the important holiday quarter, positioning Apple at #2 only behind Fitbit (which wouldn’t be included at all if we were to look at just full-featured smartwatches). Fitbit, according to IDC’s data, sold almost double Apple with 8.1 million units shipped and 29.5% of the market versus 15% for Apple.

Apple grew its Watch distribution, enjoyed holiday promotions, and drove the company’s overall ‘Other Products’ revenue during 4Q15. However, volumes for the quarter grew only slightly from the previous quarter and total revenues have yet to counterbalance the slowing growth and declines from the company’s other product categories. Expectations are higher for the next-generation Watch that can leverage the company’s platforms (HealthKit, ResearchKit, WatchKit, and watchOS 2) and connectivity capabilities.

The Apple Watch sales estimate is slightly under the 5.1 million units for the quarter that Strategy Analytics calculated in its report from last week. That report looked only at the smartwatch category not including the basic fitness trackers, however, and noted that Apple’s 5.1 million units sold was over half of the total 8.1 million total smartwatch units it estimated were sold during the quarter, a number which for the first time matched sales of traditional Swiss watches. That’s opposed to IDC’s report measuring the wearables market as a whole with 27.4 million units shipped during the quarter (up 126.9% year over year).

As for how the other full-fledged smartwatch makers are competing with Apple, IDC estimates Samsung sold 1.3 million units during Q4 and just 3.1 million during all of 2015. The rest of the smartwatch makers didn’t even chart and were included in IDC’s “Others” category.

Apple-Watch-IDC-sales-02

When looking at 2015 in its entirety (above), IDC estimates around 11.6 million Apple Watch units sold, putting Apple just behind Xiaomi for the year and ahead of Garmin and Samsung.

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Comments

  1. Doug Aalseth - 8 years ago

    Happened to be at a store that had an AppleWatch on display last week and I got a couple of minutes to play with it. Wasn’t able to do much. The biggest thing was I wanted to get back to the “bubble” screen, the middle one shown in the picture in the article. No matter what I did, turn the stem, tap the crown, swipe left, right, up or down, I couldn’t get it to change. It wouldn’t leave the watch screen, on the right in the picture above.

    It looks intriguing but apparently it’s harder to use than the publicity says.

    • That’s weird – I tried the Watches in store and didn’t have a problem. All you do is press the crown in like a button and it returns to the home screen.

      • Doug Aalseth - 8 years ago

        I wonder if I didn’t tap the crown hard enough. Next time I see one I’ll give that a shot.

    • twelve01 - 8 years ago

      Hard to know without more context. Pressing the crown – equivalent to the home button – would get you to the watch faces. It requires a firm press as it is a clickable button,, not a tap. If you’re not at an Apple Store, you could have encountered a broken unit

  2. Interesting that just like with Apple Music, Apple enters the market and goes straight to number two. Pretty much the only person they can’t knock out straight away is the market leader.

    • Except FitBit fits into this category like a moped fits into the luxury sedan market. There’s no point in putting unit shipments for both FitBit and Apple in the same report and “marketshare” is even more absurd because the products are in completely different markets.

      Don’t be fooled, Apple is currently number one in the connected time-piece market and doing remarkably well in the global timepiece market in general.

      • chrisl84 - 8 years ago

        Consider how many people commented that Apple Watch will kill the Fitbit brand…..I’d say its perfectly appropriate to group them. And show them once again that Spotify and Fitbit are still #1

      • twelve01 - 8 years ago

        Chris, it is in the process of killing Fitbit, or at least thier growth prospects. They are down 19% today, and 40% for 2016. Growth in standalone trackers have limited upside going forward – especially as smart watches become more capable

  3. Jerry Glonek - 8 years ago

    Just bought my wife one since it was $100 off. She actually does have legitimate uses for it (easy access to texts from co-workers when she can’t pull out her phone, etc). I still don’t have a use for one myself, personally.

    It’s also not as user friendly as other Apple devices, that’s for sure. A little complicated to set up, and some quirks that don’t make sense. Like, it has a speaker but you can’t play any music through it? If you try to play music it goes through the iPhone – UNLESS you have a bluetooth headset attached to the Watch.. but then only Apple Music plays through the headphone, and other music apps still pay through the iPhone. Huh?

    • twelve01 - 8 years ago

      Music through the watch speaker would not be a good experience. I wouldn’t call that a quirk.

    • twelve01 - 8 years ago

      Also, which music apps were you trying to use? Obviously you would need to use one that offered a b Apple Watch app, like Pandora. If the company doesn’t issue a watch app (e.g. Spotify) then of course it wouldn’t play through the watch

  4. Odys (@twittester10) - 8 years ago

    Whats painfully clear is that wearables as a category are not moving into mainstream yet. Obviously, when iPhone first came out the adoption was slow as well. Wearables have been on the market for awhile, and Apple Watch does not come as stark contrast to competitor wearables as iPhone’s truly revolutionary touch screen interface. I hope Watch 2 will convince more people, but so far it remains a niche product.

    • I had an amazing incident th other day when someone announced they wanted a smartwatch but ‘not the Apple one’ because ‘it costs like £600’. I was intrigued as they really are non techy, and aren’t someone with a ton of disposable income, so I asked why. He enthusiastically replied ‘because you can get everything on your wrist: phone calls, text messages, Facebook!’ He was amazed when I told him an Androod Wear watch would work with iPhone. I explained to him about the weight of the Apple Watch and the doubt some have that it won’t live up to the iPod, iPhone, iPad success and he said ‘but it is isn’t it? It’s amazing!’

      Tl;dr: He wanted a smartwatch, and didn’t care if it wasn’t the Apple Watch.

      • Me In LA - 8 years ago

        Sure he, er you did…

      • twelve01 - 8 years ago

        Great story

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.