The global smartwatch market recorded a healthy 24% YoY growth in 2021 after seeing hardly any growth in the preceding year due to COVID-19. Q4 2021 alone saw over 40 million units shipped, which is the highest quarterly shipments for the category ever, the latest data from Counterpoint shows.

With newer features that help monitor health parameters like blood pressure, ECG, and SPO2 making it to cheaper watches, the market looks set to expand even further this year.

Global Top 9 Smartwatch Brands Shipment Share, 2021 vs 2020 (via Counterpoint)

Moving on to brand performance during last year, it was Apple that held the top spot in the smartwatch market globally, with a share of 30%. The company also accounted for half of the total market revenue.

Samsung stood second and was actually one of the most successful smartwatch OEMs in 2021, recording QoQ growth of over 200% in Q3 2021, and continued growing well into the end of last year. Moving on to Wear OS following a partnership with Google has helped partly with that.

Huawei ranked third, continuing its launch of various high-end and kids’ smartwatches despite the US ban. However, the company’s market share dipped from 10.7% in 2020 to about 7.7% in 2021.

Smartwatch-Shipment-Proportion-by-Region-2021-vs-2020
Smartwatch Shipment Proportion by Region, 2021 vs 2020 (via Counterpoint)

The rest of the market was captured by brands like imoo, Amazfit, Garmin, Fitbit, Xiaomi, and Noise — in order of their market share. From these imoo was actually the top choice in the kids’ smartwatch segment. Amazfit, meanwhile, expanded its position in the market in 2021, recording a 20% YoY growth.

That aside, it’s important to highlight here that India was actually one of the driving forces behind the global smartwatch market growth in 2021. The country only accounted for 3% of the global market in 2020 but grew nearly four times to close at 10% in 2021.

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