Apple rarely reveals sales numbers or internal statistics and when a new Cupertino product hit the shelves, we are often left guessing how successful it is based on market research. Long lines and campouts in front of Apple stores can often be deceiving, but as it turns out, a seemingly bad sales report, can be just as misleading.
By all accounts from various market researchers, the Apple Watch was destined for failure and numbers did, in fact seem to show a steep decline in sales after the initial craze. However, a new report suggest that despite this less than optimistic picture, Apple’s first generation wearable still managed to do tremendously well in the emerging smartwatch market.
How well you might ask? Well, it appears that the Apple watch now has a whopping 75.5% share of the smartwatch market, as of Q2 2015. Furthermore, the numbers, courtesy of Strategy Analytics, also claim that Apple’s wearable is the main reason for an unprecedented year over year growth in smartwatch sales of 457.3%.
After 1 million units shipped in Q2 2014, the market has now grown to 5.3 million. Of course, the steep rise in the popularity of smart wearables, is more of a global trend than anything else, but the fact that Apple brought a serious boost to the niche is out of question.
It is worth noting that the new and dynamic nature of the smartwatch business makes it quite susceptible to such major fluctuations. Only a year ago Samsung found itself in a similar position with a market share of 73.6%. This means that we can expect more major shifts before the wearable niche matures enough to define itself and starts effectively catering to customer requirements.