The market for wearables, such as smartwatches or bracelets, is gaining more ground as it’s getting bigger every year and there’s more variety of companies launching their own products, but there are only two very different companies that are setting the pace for this industry – Xiaomi and Apple. Recently, Xiaomi managed to surpass Apple in the wearables market.
A recent study by IDC shows the evolution of sales of wearables and how Xiaomi surpassed those of the Cupertino-based company. Xiaomi sold more than 32 billion such devices in the third quarter of 2018, worldwide, 21.7% more than in the same period of the last year.
Apple doesn’t usually share a lot of Apple Watch sales data for any of its versions. That is why the data from the consulting firm IDC are of great help in corroborating what was already being speculated in the sector, that the smartwatches of Apple were gathering more ground, especially since the Apple Watch Series 3 has launched.
Xiaomi Surpassed Apple In Wearables Market, Scoring More Sales In Q3 2018 That The Cupertino-based Company
According to data provided by IDC, Apple sold about 4.2 million smartwatches in Q3 2018, which is a substantial increase over last year when they only sold only 2.7 million units.
Despite this spectacular growth, there is another company that has positioned itself at the top of the wearables market. With a very different type of business than Apple, the Chinese company Xiaomi, whose main characteristic is its supercompetitive prices, has sold more smartwatches in Q3 2018 than the Cupertino-based company.
The success is due to the Mi Band 3, a smart bracelet that sold to 6,9 billion consumers worldwide.
These two companies, Apple and Xiaomi, share the highest wearables market shares, with Xiaomi scoring 21.5%, while Apple only 13.1%. The other manufacturers of smartwatches and bracelets have not achieved so much momentum, Fitbit for example, managing to score fewer sales than in 2017.
