Leading global technology market analyst firm, Canalys has recently published a report on the state of the global wearables market in the first quarter of 2022. In the report, it is stated that 41.7 million wearables were shipped in Q1 2022 alone, of which basic fitness band shipments compromised of only 9.7 million (23.3 per cent of the market), while the rest of the market is held by basic watch and smartwatch shipments at a staggering 32.0 million. 

Overall the worldwide wearables market in Q1 2022 experienced total shipments fell by 4% YoY when compared to Q1 2021. This phenomenon is caused by the rapidly declining social relevance of fitness bands, but fortunately, shipments did not fall further due to the rising popularity of the basic watch and smartwatch market.

Currently, Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi are the Top 3 best-selling wearables brands globally. Apple dominates in first with its 22.1% market share. The company had shipped out 9.2 million of its Apple Watches in Q1 2022, which could be could be contributed to the brand launching not only its flagship Apple Watch Series 7 of smartwatches but also launching a more affordable Apple Watch SE smartwatch, providing more options for the consumers and capturing more of the market share. Due to this, the company experienced a positive 21% growth in annual sales when comparing Q1 2021 and Q1 2022.

Moving onto Huawei, the company rises up from third place last year to second place this year with 11.1% of the wearables market share and 4.1 million total shipments of its fitness bands and smartwatches. The brand remains steady in the wearables market with the main appeal of its smartwatches being the company’s OpenHarmony ecosystem. The OpenHarmony ecosystem allows Huawei smartwatches to not only be connected to your Huawei smartphone, but also to Huawei’s IoT smart devices as well. And that includes the company’s own electric vehicles. For example, you can use your Huawei Watch as digital car keys to unlock your Huawei Car.

Xiaomi, on the other hand, has dropped from second to third with 10.1% of market share and 4.2 million shipments, mainly due to dwindling sales of the brand’s fitness bands. As fitness bands continue to lose in popularity due to their smaller screens, the brand itself is already quietly switching its focus to developing smartwatches. But currently, Xiaomi smartwatches like the Xiaomi Watch S1 are still the company’s first attempts at the concept, and with the shifting marketing focus, the fitness band sales decline is to be accelerated as well.

Coming in at 4th and 5th are Samsung and Fitbit respectively. Samsung remains stable in the wearables market with an increased 8.1% market share in Q1 2022 at 3.4 million shipments, due to the company’s collaboration with Google’s Wear OS for its Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 series of smartwatches. Meanwhile, Fitbit, which has been acquired by Google saw its sales drop to 2.9 million in Q1 2022 with 7% of the total wearables market share. 

Analysing the basic fitness band market, it has been on a steady decline since Q4 2020. The bands suffered a 37% decline quarter-on-quarter (Q4 2021 to Q1 2022), marking the sixth consecutive fall in the quarterly shipments since Q4 2020. And the 9.7 million shipments figure is the first time that the fitness band market has dipped below 10 million in a long time after it had peaked at 27.9 million in Q4 2019.

On the other hand, the basic watch and smartwatch market has seen positive growth YoY by up to 15%. The Canalys report has cited some reasons why watches are growing in popularity.

“Consumers are favouring watches over bands. With bigger displays, richer features and longer battery life, they believe watches are better able to fulfil their health-tracking and digital lifestyle needs,” said Sherry Jin, Canalys Research Analyst. “Basic watches are positioned as an affordable step-up from basic bands, suitable for price-conscious consumers with growing expectations as to what wearables can do.”

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(Source)

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After a seven-quarter streak of net positive growth for the PC Market in Mainland China, Q1 2022 finally marks an end to the PC market growth in the region. 

In Q1 2022, PC shipments in the country fell by 1% QoQ to 11.7 million units. Among these units, desktop PC shipments fell by 11% to 3.9 million units, while notebook laptop shipments continue to rise by 6% to 7.7 million units. 

As for the tablet shipments in the region, shipments have continued to trend downward by 11%, to a new low of 4.7 million units. The main reason for this downward trajectory is the demand for tablets in both the general and enterprise markets. 

Coming to market share, the PC Market in China for Q1 2022 was led by Lenovo with over 37% market share at 4.289 million units, then Dell in second with 12% market share. Coming in at third and fourth are HP and Asus respectively, while Huawei rounds out the Top 5 with 0.71 million PC shipments. 

Huawei saw the biggest sales growth YoY with 66% positive net growth. The brand’s presence had grown from 428 thousand shipments in Q1 2021 to 710 thousand shipments in the region.

On the Chinese tablet market front, Apple is on the top with 1.2 million shipments amounting to 26% of the region’s market share, but Huawei comes in at a close second with 20% market share. Rounding out the top 5 are Xiaomi with 13% in third place, HONOR with 9% in fourth, and Lenovo with 7% in fifth.

In the report, Emma Xu, an analyst at Canalys, said: “While the first quarter of 2022 remained relatively strong, China’s PC industry faces further challenges on both the supply and demand sides as the impact of the country’s COVID-19 lockdown intensifies.” 

“The supply shortage of key components such as SoCs has persisted. By the first quarter, production and logistics conditions deteriorated mainly due to the lockdown of key cities such as Shanghai and Kunshan. At the same time, business and consumer activities were restricted amid a deteriorating economy, threatening domestic demand for PCs, weakening consumer spending and constraining business demand, especially from SMEs. This will challenge China’s PC makers for the rest of 2022. Public sector procurement will also be curtailed as the government plans to tighten budgets this year.”

Emma had also remarked: “But the education sector in China will likely remain a bright spot, as the goal of closing socioeconomic disparities and improving vocational education programs will drive investment that favours the technology market. Finally, the competitive landscape for Chinese PC sellers will be more favourable for local brands. The government currently has security concerns over the use of hardware and software developed by foreign entities. Suppliers such as Huawei and Tongfang will see unprecedented opportunities as core players in China’s ‘start-up’ industry, which is focused on developing domestic IT Innovation.”

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(Via)

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Motorola has been expanding its portfolio of smartphones and has a presence in the budget, mid-range, and high-end categories. It is also set to be the first one to launch a device powered by the newly launched Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset.

Now, a new report from 91Mobiles claims that the Lenovo-owned smartphone brand will be launching two new smartphones in the Indian market in the first quarter of 2022. It has also been revealed that one of those will be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.

In that case, it’s likely that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered smartphone will be the Moto Edge X30 which is set to go official in China on 9th December. There’s also a possibility that the phone could land in India under a different name.

The other device which is expected to launch alongside could be a Moto G-series phone, likely to be the Moto G71. But it could also be the Moto G200 or Moto G41, both of which are yet to launch in China. The company is set to launch the Moto G51 in India later this week, on 10th December.

Motorola has already confirmed that the Edge X30 will come with an OLED panel that supports a 144Hz refresh rate, HDR10+, and 10-bit colors. It appears to feature a 6.67-inch Full HD+ display. It could come packed with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 512 GB of internal storage in China.

As for the cameras, there will be 50-megapixel dual cameras and a 2-megapixel macro camera.  On the front side, the device may have a 60-megapixel snapper for taking selfies and video calling. Running Android 12 out-of-the-box, the phone will come powered by a 5,000mAh battery with 68W fast charging.

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Apple has seen some impressive numbers related to the sales of the iPhone 13 series and now the company is reportedly set to increase its lead with the bumper sales in the current quarter as well, i.e. from October to December this year.

According to a new report from Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives (via AppleInsider), the Cupertino-based technology giant is estimated to sell more than 80 million iPhones in the current holiday quarter, which happens to be Apple’s first fiscal quarter for 2022.

In his note, Ives writes: “Despite the chip shortage and Rubik’s Cube logistics that Apple (and every other technology, auto, and retail vendor) is dealing with we are seeing tremendous demand trends both in the US and China for iPhone 13 which is a positive sign that Apple could exceed selling 80 million iPhone units in the quarter with stronger Pro versions driving higher ASPs.”

It is further noted that between Black Friday and Christmas, the company could sell 40 million units of iPhones. Not just that, the company is also expected to sell up to 100 million Apple AirPods in this quarter.

This is in line with what J. P. Morgan had predicted based on the delivery times for the iPhone 13 series. The investment firm noted that with the delivery timeframe growing longer for the 2021 models of the iPhones, demand is surpassing supply by around 15%.

Apple’s iPhone production, like many other products, has been suffering from the global chip shortage and the estimated shipping time for the iPhone 13 was spanning weeks and has cost the company $6 billion. As per the report, Apple suppliers have managed to ease the shortage of certain components and with a production boom, it will be able to address the issues of availability and demand.

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Huawei has already launched its P50 series of flagship smartphones but the Chinese giant is yet to announce the Mate 50-series phones. The Huawei Mate-series flagship devices usually launch around September or October. However, that may not be the case this time, if the latest report is to be believed.

The company had launched the Huawei P50 series smartphones in July this year, much late than its usual timeline of March. So, it would be too early for Huawei to launch the next-generation Mate series phones.

Now, a new report coming from China claims that the upcoming Huawei Mate 50 series of flagship smartphones are now expected to go official in the first quarter of next year, and the announcement is likely to happen in March.

The smartphones in the lineup are expected to come powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 898 chipset. However, unlike this processor powering other smartphones, it’ll be different in the Mate 50 series as instead of having 5G support, the chipset will only support 4G connectivity.

It is also being speculated that the phones will come equipped with an LTPO display — the same technology that we are seeing in the newly launched Apple iPhone 13 Pro series. This could mean that the phone will have support for adaptive refresh rate, with support for a high refresh rate of 120Hz.

Recently, it was reported that the upcoming Huawei Mate 50 smartphone will come with support for satellite connectivity when the cellular network isn’t available. The satellite connectivity will be used to communicate via short message service (SMS) in a situation where a cellular network isn’t an option.

For this, the company has reportedly opted for the Beidou Satellite System. It is being reported that because of this new feature addition, the launch of the upcoming flagship smartphone from Huawei has been delayed.

It is also indicative of the fact that Huawei is still trying to innovate in the smartphone space and hasn’t given up on the mobile phone business despite being severely restricted by the United States sanctions. But it’s noteworthy that the satellite communication feature hasn’t been confirmed by Huawei and it currently looks like speculation.

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