Rebounding in the Smartwatch Market Many thanks to Apple and Huawei

According to Counterpoint Research, the global smartwatch market saw a 9% year-over-year increase in shipments in Q3, driven by Apple's wearables, following a slow 2022.

This year's Q3 was Apple's best ever, with shipments up 7% from the previous year. The Series 9 was released approximately one week later into the quarter than the Series 8 last year, which makes the increase noteworthy. Yet the version that "significantly contributed to [Apple's] growth" was the more affordable Apple Watch SE from 2022, according to Counterpoint.

According to Counterpoint, Samsung, Apple's primary rival in the smartwatch market, saw a 19% year-over-year decline in Q3. However, that resulted from fewer people purchasing the company's earlier Galaxy Watch models. During the summer, the percentage of Galaxy Watch 6 Classic purchases "increased compared to last year’s 5 Pro, contributing to the rise in the [average sale price] of the brand."

The quarter's biggest winner is Huawei, a business that doesn't do much business in the US these days but was up 56% year over year. The majority of that expansion occurred in the company's home market of China, where it most recently unveiled Huawei 5G smartphones that came with smartwatches. The company's Watch 4 and 4 Pro series, released in Q2, and the Watch GT 4, released in Q3, both saw strong sales, and its HLOS smartwatches—smartwatches that run an OS and can run apps—saw a 122% increase in shipments in Q3.

"Most consumer device markets, including those for smartphones, are still stagnating compared to a year ago amidst a global economic slowdown. On the other hand, both the premium and budget smartwatch segments have seen YoY growth in the market for the past two quarters, according to Woojin Son, a research analyst at Counterpoint.

35% of all smartwatch shipments worldwide came from the Indian market, which leads the world in basic smartwatch sales—that is, watches that don't allow users to install third-party apps. Fire-Boltt is the market leader there, but the three main Indian brands—Noise, boAt, and Fire-Boltt—are currently growing more slowly than they did previously, which suggests that the market is stabilizing in the area.