With the success of the Mi Band 3 in India and other markets outside China, Xiaomi took first place with a 21.5% market share globally for the third quarter, while Apple took second place with 13.1%, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).
Global wearable device shipments reached 32 million units in the third quarter of 2018 – an increase of 21,7% compared with the previous year, according to the “Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker” by IDC.
Although China usually accounts for over 80 percent of Xiaomi's product shipments, this share fell to 61% as the company managed to increase its presence in other markets such as India, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Xiaomi shipped 6.9 million wearables, compared to Apple's 4.2 million. Fitbit came in third, with 3.5 million shipments.
Many of the new core wearables include features such as notifications or simple app integrations.
“This helped satisfy consumer demand for more capable devices while also maintaining average selling prices in a market facing many pressures from low‑cost sellers and declining smartwatch pricing”, said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst at IDC Mobile Tracker.
New products from Fitbit, Garmin and Huawei helped the core category of wearables return to the spotlight during the third quarter, IDC said.
Another factor that drove this growth was the increasing demand in markets such as Asia (excluding Japan), which represented more than half of all exports and increased by 21.4% compared to the previous year.
This increase appears to be due to the fact that wearables have delved deeper into the health sector.
Apple managed to launch the Series 4 Watch, its first smartwatch approved for medical use, towards the end of the year.
The new design and sizes, together with the latest version of watchOS, were welcome changes.
Huawei was found exactly ahead of Samsung in fourth place worldwide, emphasizing its newer series “TalkBand B5” of its wristbands.
Samsung slightly reduced its gap from Huawei, winning fifth place for the third quarter.
The company launched its next generation smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch, which is the first time a company wearable device has been removed from the traditional “Gear” menu into the sub‑brand “Galaxy”, IDC said.
