Apple Stays Ahead Of Xiaomi And Samsung In AirPods And Watch Market

Do you see a lot of AirPods and Watches on the street? The latest figures from IDC show how Apple dominates these markets.

In the wearable market, the IDC firm mixes up a bit of everything: connected watches, bracelets, but also headphones and earphones. It is a market that grew by 28.4% in 2020, with 444.7 million units sold.

Although it has never sold so many watches and connected headphones, we still noted that the market for connected bracelets decreased by 17.8% during the quarter and only represented 11.5%. of all wearables sold. Hearable devices, which includes headphones and headsets, are the largest category of wearable devices with 64.2%, followed by watches with 24.1%.

In all cases, the lights are green for Apple. With its Watch and AirPods, the American brand dominates with an impressive market share.

Apple Secures 36.2% Market Share At The End Of 2020

On the connected watch side, the IDC study explains that Apple Watch shipments have increased by 45% year on year, thanks to a wide range: Apple Watch Series 3, Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Watch SE.

As for the “ hearable ” category, which includes AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max, IDC says sales are up 22% year-over-year.

In total, IDC analysts estimate that Apple sold 55.6 million wearable products in the fourth quarter of 2020, up from 43.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. This represents a total growth of 27% and gives Apple 36, 2% of the total wearable market. Apple’s two competitors are Xiaomi and Samsung, which sold 13.5 million and 13 million units in the quarter, respectively. Huawei takes third place ahead of Samsung if we look at the full year 2020. It will also be noted that Fitbit collapses, while the company was bought by Google.

According to one of Apple’s specialist analysts, Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple would have sold around 90 million AirPods in 2020, he expects this figure to fall to around 78 million by 2021. The impact of AirPods Max on this market should be, the analyst forecasts only 1 million units sold over the whole of 2021.