The best smartwatch you can buy is the Apple Watch Series 4, and the latest figures from Counterpoint Research show that the vast majority of people understand this, as it’s by far the world’s most popular smartwatch, too. During the first three months of 2019, 35.8% of smartwatches shipped around the world came from Apple, and that’s up from 35.5% from the same time last year.
Apple released the Series 4 Apple Watch at the end of last year, revising the design for the first time, albeit subtly, and in doing so created an absolute winner. Since then it has further improved with the introduction of the electrocardiogram, or ECG, feature. First launched in the U.S., it has since been approved for use in the U.K. and 19 other countries. Counterpoint Research says it’s the wearable’s most desirable feature, based on data from a consumer survey.
While we strongly recommend the Apple Watch Series 4, it’s not the only decent smartwatch out there, and there are two other companies chasing after Apple for smartwatch supremacy in terms of quality. The names will be familiar to anyone also following the battle for first, second, and third place in smartphone market share, as they are Samsung and Huawei.
Samsung’s in second position with an 11.1% market share, well above last year, when it had 7.2%. Since then, it has launched the Galaxy Watch and the Galaxy Watch Active, two great smartwatches that use its Tizen operating system. Huawei is in sixth position with 2.8%, based almost solely on the Huawei Watch GT, which uses Huawei’s own LiteOS software, and fitness bands from itself and Honor. In between Huawei and Samsung are Fitbit, Amazfit, and Imoo.
Have you spotted the pattern yet? None of these manufacturers use Google’s Wear OS. Fossil is in seventh place, and relies on Google’s wearable software platform for its products. At the beginning of 2018, it had 3.2% market share, but for the first three months of 2019, Counterpoint Research puts Fossil’s market share at 2.5%. Fossil may be prolific — producing watches from designers including Armani Exchange, Kate Spade, and under its own Fossil name too — but Google’s forever-stalled software doesn’t appear to be helping it catch its rivals here.
To purchase these watches, check out these retailers:
Apple Watch Series 4
Samsung Galaxy Watch
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