Samsung is still far behind Apple in smartwatch sales

When it comes to all-rounder smartwatches for the mass market, Apple and Samsung have been leading the pack for quite some time now. On paper, smartwatches from both brands are neck-to-neck in terms of hardware specifications, and with the Apple Watch Ultra and the Galaxy Watch Ultra, in design too. However, when it comes to sales, Samsung has been far behind Apple since the latter entered the smartwatch market. Unfortunately, that hasn’t changed in the last quarter.

Canalys has just published an analysis on the worldwide smart wearable band shipment in Q2 2024. The bit about shipments of smartwatches in the last quarter is the one that we want to discuss today.

According to the report, Apple had a 49% share in smartwatch shipments in Q2 2024, scoring the top position on the chart. Samsung came in it at second position with a 15% share. That means the South Korean tech giant shipped more than three times fewer smartwatches compared to the Cupertino-based tech giant. Garmin, Huawei, and Google managed to grab third, fourth, and fifth positions respectively with 11%, 7%, and 4% shares, as you can see in the image below.

Why are people choosing Apple Watches over Wear OS smartwatches?

Simply put, Apple has a hold over almost half of the smartwatch market worldwide. Apple's smartwatches are generally more expensive than the ones from Google and Samsung. Despite that, more people are buying Apple Watches instead of Galaxy Watches or Pixel Watches. It shows that Apple is doing something right that Google and Samsung aren't.

In my experience, Apple Watches have three main advantages over Galaxy Watches and Pixel Watches. First, the ones from Apple have a rectangular screen, which shows more info than the ones from Google and Samsung. Second, Apple's smartwatches offer more accurate health and fitness tracking than Google's and Samsung's smartwatches. Third, Apple Watches are faster and have a better-looking and more user-friendly UI.

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I think if Google and Samsung work on these things, more people will buy Wear OS smartwatches, However, making those changes could take a lot of time. So, don't expect sales of Wear OS smartwatches to improve anytime soon.

Things get even worse for Samsung when you take smart bands into consideration

When you look at the overall smart wearable band shipments worldwide, which include basic smart bands, basic smartwatches, and fully-fledged smartwatches, Apple still comes out on top with a 17.4% share. Unfortunately, Samsung is in fourth place in this chart with a 6.4% share. In second and third positions are Huawei and Xiaomi with 13.5% and 13.3% shares respectively.