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Apple Watch Predicted to Capture 50% Market Share in 2016 on 14 Million Sales

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While the Apple Watch captured an impressive 75.5 percent share of the smartwatch market through its launch quarter last year, market research firm IDC predicts that watchOS will gradually cede market share to competing platforms such as Android Wear, Tizen, and Pebble OS over the next four to five years.

Apple-Watch-trio.jpg

IDC forecasts that the Apple Watch software will capture 49.4 percent market share in 2016, but that figure is expected to drop to 37.6 percent in 2020. IDC expects global shipments of 237.1 million wearable devices in 2020, up from an estimated 110 million in 2016, as the wearable market continues to grow.

The decline in market share will not be indicative of fewer Apple Watch sales, as sales of the wrist-worn device are projected to rise from an estimated 14 million units in 2016 to 31 million in 2020. Comparatively, Apple sold an estimated 11.5 million watches over the final 8 months of 2015, based on combined IDC and Strategy Analytics data.

IDC-apple-watch-2016-to-2020.jpg

Instead, the wearable market is expected to become a more competitive landscape. IDC forecasts that Android Wear will remain the second most popular smartwatch platform, with an estimated 6.1 million sales and 21.4 percent market share in 2016 rising to 28.8 million sales and 35 percent market share by 2020.

IDC believes that Chinese smartwatches using real-time operating systems (RTOS) will trail in third place in the smartwatch market with 10.1 percent market share by 2020. Tizen, Android, Linux, and Pebble OS round off the list with estimated 6.6 percent, 5.2 percent, 2.8 percent, and 2.7 percent market shares by 2020.

Article Link: Apple Watch Predicted to Capture 50% Market Share in 2016 on 14 Million Sales
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/17/idc-apple-watch-forecast-2016-to-2020/
Congrats to Apple, but now we do need a WatchOS 3.0 that delivers:
- A LOT of watch faces and adaptability
- a gui that does make sense
- more SIRI actions with the Apple Watch (dictating notes, etc.)
- rating music
- displaying html mails
- speed!
- buttons that can be assigned (or at least buttons that do make sense due to frequent usage ("friends" does not do it and Apple Pay is not available in my country as it isn't in 97% of the countries world-wide...)
 
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I like mine. If they add GPS, I'll upgrade to the next one because I don't like having my phone around when I go for runs. My wife also likes hers, and she loves the ability to swap out the bands to coordinate with different clothing options. Much of what I'd like to see happen with the watch is software related, so it's all a matter of time. Remember when Steve said he'd be happy with 10 million iPhones sold in the first year? So, 14 million WATCHES in a year....yeah, I'd say Apple is doing just fine.
 
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Kaibelf said:
And yet every time I read a story about the watch, people call it a flop and say Tim should either resign for it or discontinue the product. Amazing. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It IS a flop in Apple standards, regarding Apples undenibale ambitions this being the next big thing after the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The curse of an unparalleled success story in the last 15 years.
 
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OllyW said:
I think some people have unrealistic expectations and expect sales to immediately reach iPhone levels.
Click to expand...
Which is why they are not citing sales figures for the watch, but lumping them in with other devices. The iPhone has set such an impossibly high bar that even good relative sales would be the fodder of discontent. Based on how others are following along, it seems like the watch is doing what it was intended to do, get the foot in the door and set the tone instead of following along after others sour the market completely. IMHO, of course.
 
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I think the Apple Watch is the first smart watch that has just enough of all the bits you need to make a good smart watch. It has a cool look, quite customisable with good and growing software support.

When I look at the other smart watches I see only one of these characteristics. They either look nice and don't do much (Android Watches) or they have a nice user interface, good software but no long term developer support (Tizen Samsung watch) or they have a long battery life but don't look very appealing (Pebble Time).

And of course there are fitness bands which are trying to come at the wearable from a different angle and most of those either don't look nice or don't do much.

Now having said that, I don't think the current Apple Watch (which I own by the way) is ready for the mainstream. I think it's still very much an early adopters device. It needs to be faster and it needs to be more consistent in performing the small number of tasks it has been designed for.

I think perhaps by the 3rd iteration it'll be something I could recommend to other people. Right now I say to people who ask, only get it if you're going to use the fitness stuff because beyond that it doesn't do much well and you'll find yourself reaching for your iPhone to use Siri and its other features just due to how slow and inconsistent the watch is right now, one example of that is even now notifications are still inconsistent on mine. Restores, reboots etc nothing fixes it. Sometimes you'll get notifications consistently for a few days on the Watch and other times they'll go 50/50 to the iPhone so it's not really bug free yet either in my usage and I have owned two so far.

Overall I do like mine a lot, I'm a runner and the fitness stuff is great and the other features are enjoyable to use when they work consistently, I'm sure Watch OS 2.2 and Watch OS 3 will further refine the experience, there is no doubt in my mind that it will become the de-facto standard by which other smart watches are judged if it hasn't already.
 
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I know I'll end up getting one, as the appeal of health tracking with an integrated device makes a lot of sense, but I have had a hard time just thinking about giving up wearing my automatic watch, that has been on my wrist for the past 11 years and never failed me.

I'm hoping Apple can eek out some additional battery life with their next iteration, so that I don't have to think about charging it every night. Maybe they could add in an automatic rotational charger to provide a bit more life to the Watch and create a hybrid mechanical / electronic Watch.
 
lars666 said:
It IS a flop in Apple standards, regarding Apples undenibale ambitions this being the next big thing after iPod, iPhone and iPad. The curse of an unparalleled success story in the last 15 years.
Click to expand...
However, even this is not true. Even by Apple standards the Apple Watch is not a flop, matching or exceeding previous 1st generation products FROM APPLE. The myth about the Apple Watch "flop" is so prevalent on MacRumors even those who think they are defending the Apple Watch (or pretend to be) repeat it.

Apple bashers on this forum used to decry the Steve Jobs "Reality Distortion Field." It is safe to say Steve Jobs was not the only personality capable of distorting reality. The MacRumors forum membership has collectively achieved an equally powerful distortion of reality.
 
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lars666 said:
It IS a flop in Apple standards, regarding Apples undenibale ambitions this being the next big thing after the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The curse of an unparalleled success story in the last 15 years.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Like OllyW said above, when people compare it to iPhone sales they build an unrealistic expectation in their mind. Why anyone would make that leap in logic is beyond me. Watch sales should be compared to other watch sales; putting it into proper context. In it's market, smartwaches, it is the most successful product minus Fitbit. Considering it's starting price compared to the entirety of the category, flop is not the descriptor I'd use. Remember it's a gen 1 device. How does it stand up to gen 1 of the iPod, iPhone, or iPad? Perspective.

This is coming from someone who thinks the AW looks way too feminine and would never own one as it's currently designed. Regardless of my personal opinion of the watch's aesthetics, it's far from a flop.
 
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lars666 said:
It IS a flop in Apple standards, regarding Apples undenibale ambitions this being the next big thing after the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The curse of an unparalleled success story in the last 15 years.
Click to expand...

If you compare this generation 1 watch to the Gen 1 iPhone or iPad then this really isn't any different. Apple need time to refine the device and to broaden its appeal. People need to be convinced that it's better than what they already have.

Before the iPhone everyone had feature phones and of those who had tried touch screens they had a pre-conceived opinion that they were crap. No one had touched a capacitive touch screen before or at-least 99% of people hadn't. Most had only interacted with resistive touch ones that were god awful for finger use and no one wanted a stylus.

These barriers took time to overcome, the iPhone and iPad were not overnight successes. Don't forget that even Apple had to slash the price of the original iPhone almost immediately (within the first few months) due to lacklustre sales.
 
Quu said:
I think the Apple Watch is the first smart watch that has just enough of all the bits you need to make a good smart watch. It has a cool look, quite customisable with good and growing software support.

When I look at the other smart watches I see only one of these characteristics. They either look nice and don't do much (Android Watches) or they have a nice user interface, good software but no long term developer support (Tizen Samsung watch) or they have a long battery life but don't look very appealing (Pebble Time).

And of course there are fitness bands which are trying to come at the wearable from a different angle and most of those either don't look nice or don't do much.

Now having said that, I don't think the current Apple Watch (which I own by the way) is ready for the mainstream. I think it's still very much an early adopters device. It needs to be faster and it needs to be more consistent in performing the small number of tasks it has been designed for.

I think perhaps by the 3rd iteration it'll be something I could recommend to other people. Right now I say to people who ask, only get it if you're going to use the fitness stuff because beyond that it doesn't do much well and you'll find yourself reaching for your iPhone to use Siri and its other features just due to how slow and inconsistent the watch is right now, one example of that is even now notifications are still inconsistent on mine. Restores, reboots etc nothing fixes it. Sometimes you'll get notifications consistently for a few days on the Watch and other times they'll go 50/50 to the iPhone so it's not really bug free yet either in my usage and I have owned two so far.

Overall I do like mine a lot, I'm a runner and the fitness stuff is great and the other features are enjoyable to use when they work consistently, I'm sure Watch OS 2.2 and Watch OS 3 will further refine the experience, there is no doubt in my mind that it will become the de-facto standard by which other smart watches are judged if it hasn't already.
Click to expand...

If you're a runner, you might want to look into the Garmin stuff. Indoor display quality and plasticky build on all but the most expensive versions are the weak spots, but GPS, multi week battery life, notifications, programmability, and water resistance are high points.
 
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OllyW said:
I think some people have unrealistic expectations and expect sales to immediately reach iPhone levels.
Click to expand...

Unrealistic expectations that Tim Cook and friends had set. They announced the Apple Watch as the new big thing, first new product after Steve Jobs, don't forget that. Now they treat it as just another product without much importance like an iPod or a Mac.
 
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Someyoungguy said:
If you're a runner, you might want to look into the Garmin stuff. Indoor display quality and plasticky build on all but the most expensive versions are the weak spots, but GPS, multi week battery life, notifications, programmability, and water resistance are high points.
Click to expand...

I have looked at those but what I like about the Apple Watch which I already own is I can wear it anywhere and everywhere. It feels more like an iPhone with Apps that do what I need than needing to have a singular gadget for each facet of my life.

There's no doubt that the Garmin with its built in GPS is going to be more accurate but I've found the Watch does what I've needed, keeps my distance and pace, after calibration (run once with your iPhone) it's pretty accurate.
 
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The 2016 projection makes sense, extending that (exponentially) to 2020 is entirely based on hot air tho. The technologies and market will have evolved into something else by then.
[doublepost=1458233480][/doublepost]
dannyyankou said:
I don't know about everyone else but Apple Watch has become VERY popular where I live. Some flop...

Sales are still behind fitbit, but still very impressive.
Click to expand...
I think smart watches as a whole are still just a novelty tech gizmo, not that much around if you filter out geeks - and I know plenty of geeks who don't care about them, too.
 
Oh how I LOVE my apple watch!!!

I figured out an easy way to extend the battery life. First completely charge it. Then when you take it off the charger, hold the power button and slide the Power Off slider to the right.

I can't even remember when I last charged the thing.


B
 
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pentidoes said:
Congrats to Apple, but now we do need a WatchOS 3.0 that delivers:
- A LOT of watch faces and adaptability
- a gui that does make sense
- more SIRI actions with the Apple Watch (dictating notes, etc.)
- rating music
- displaying html mails
- speed!
- buttons that can be assigned (or at least buttons that do make sense due to frequent usage ("friends" does not do it and Apple Pay is not available in my country as it isn't in 97% of the countries world-wide...)
Click to expand...


I want -

- control over the screen staying on.....
- watch face dev tools
- 3rd party app speed....
 
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