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A new report by NPD is giving us a peek at smartwatch market share figures, and Google’s own Wear OS is really not doing well. In fact, accounted for under 12% of all sales between December 2017 and November 2018.
The report shows that the top three brands made up 88% of sales, with Apple and the top and Samsung and Fitbit below them. The other 12% is made up of other smartwatches, including not only Wear OS but other smaller competition. The fact that it didn’t even get its own mention in the report is a grim sign for the platform.
During the aforementioned timeframe, sales of smartwatches went up 51% to nearly $5 billion. It’s also reported that 16% of US adults own a smartwatch, which is up 33% from the previous year. We’re seeing the smartwatch market quickly grow without Google as the leader.
Google’s wearable software received a full (and fantastic, I may add) redesign last year and major brands like Fossil and Skagen are constantly pushing new smartwatches to the market, but this doesn’t seem to help the brand so far. In the meantime, brands like Samsung and Huawei are moving away from the software and using their own proprietary operating systems, which definitely doesn’t help Google.
Whether it’s a lack of marketing or any real effort on Google’s part to give Wear OS a fighting chance in the wearable market we do not know, but it has so much potential and it can definitely succeed. But I think we can all agree it still needs a bit more work.
Source: NPD
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