IDC: Wearables grew 172% in 2015 to 78.1M units, Fitbit shipments up 93.2% to 21M, Apple shipped 11.6M Watches
Apple shipped 11.6 million Apple Watches last year, says IDC — In its first nine months selling wearables, Apple has shipped an estimated 11.6 million Apple Watches …
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes out the year that put wearables on the map: IDC counted 78.1M units shipped in 2015, up 172%, with Fitbit's Q2 lead over Apple — 4.4M to 3.6M units — holding through the full year at roughly 21M shipments. But Apple's 11.6M Watches came entirely from its first nine months on sale, meaning its run-rate was already closing on Fitbit's.
The follow-on coverage shows how the ranking inverted: by Q1 2017 Apple led with 15.9% share while Xiaomi passed Fitbit, and by 2019 Apple was shipping more Watches than the entire Swiss watch industry sold.
First-order effects
- Fitbit ends 2015 as the volume leader at ~21M units, but Apple's 11.6M in nine months makes it the fastest-scaling vendor in the category and puts the #1 spot in play for 2016.
Second-order effects
- Fitbit is squeezed between Apple's premium smartwatch above it and price-led vendors like Xiaomi below it — a squeeze the Q1 2017 numbers confirm, when Xiaomi's 3.4M edged out Fitbit's 2.9-3M.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the category consolidates around full smartwatches rather than fitness bands: by 2019 Apple's 30.7M Watches outsold the entire Swiss watch industry's 21.1M units, and by Q1 2020 Apple held 29.3% of a market growing nearly 30% a year.
The trend: Wearables are shifting from cheap fitness bands to premium smartwatches, with Apple converting a late 2015 entry into category leadership within four years.