Apple Watch Pushes Wearable Sales To New High

Sales of wearable technology devices hit a new high over the last few months as consumers flocked to snap up the Apple Watch, according to recent figures.

Analyst firm IDC has released its report on wearable sales over the third quarter of 2015, showing that although Apple’s device helped spike consumer awareness, Fitbit actually kept its top spot.

It sold 4.7m devices for a 22.2 percent share of the market, ahead of Apple on 3.9m sales (18.6 percent) and Xiaomi with 3.7m sales (17.4 percent).

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Overall, the total number of devices shipped for the quarter came to 21.0 million units, up 197.6 percent from the 7.1 million units shipped over the same period last year, showing how fast consumer demand has grown.

IDC’s report showed that much of this growth has come from China, which has emerged as the fastest-growing wearables market. A variety of vendors from the country have seized on the momentum caused by the popularity of wearable devices and are now creating products for customers both at home and abroad.

This was especially true for Xiaomi, which saw more than 97 percent of its low-cost Mi Band shipped into China.

Apple also benefited from moving into new markets to post a slight increase from the previous quarter, which saw growing attention towards its entry-level and least expensive Sport line, which saw two new colour schemes released in the quarter. Apple also released watchOS 2, during the time period, bringing native third-party applications to the device and expanding its popularity amongst many consumers.

IDC recently estimated that 45.7m wearable devices would be sold this year, up 133.4 percent from last year’s figure, with today’s report showing that almost half of this has been achieved in a single quarter.

The rise is only set to continue over the next few years, with the firm estimating 126.1m units will be sold in 2019.

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