Apple Watch Sales Have Already Hit Seven Million

Sales of the Apple Watch have hit seven million units as more and more consumers look to get on board the smartwatch bandwagon, according to new figures.

The report from analyst firm Canalys shows how quickly Apple has asserted its dominance over the smartwatch market, which looks set to stretch its advantage over the coming holiday period.

In fact, Apple was the only smartwatch vendor to ship more than 300,000 units in the third quarter of the year, possibly helped by the unveiling of its latest smartphones during this period, as all other companies fell behind somewhat.

Apple chose not to release any sales figures for the Watch during its last financial results, but only began selling the device back in April.

Building momentum

“After experiencing significant supply chain constraints early on, Apple managed to overcome its production struggles with the Apple Watch and is building momentum going into Q4,’ said Canalys analyst Daniel Matte.

‘Shipments are steadily increasing as it has greatly expanded the Watch’s channel footprint internationally.’ VP and Principal Analyst Chris Jones added, ‘watchOS 2 has brought native apps to the platform, and new colours and styles have refreshed the line-up, but Apple needs to continue to generate demand six months after launch.”

Asides from the Apple Watch, the Canalys report highlighted a good quarter for Pebble, whose release of the Pebble Time Steel helped the company ship more than 200,000 total smartwatches. However there was worse news for Apple’s big rival Samsung, where shipments of its Galaxy Gear device declined ahead of the release of the Gear S2 later this year.

In the so-called ‘basic bands’ market, covering wrist-borne devices that don’t offer all the functionality of a smartwatch, Fitbit and Xiaomi lead the market, with the latter’s Mi Band surpassed 10 million cumulative shipments during the quarter thanks to aggressive pricing and frequent promotions allowed the company to hit ambitious sales targets, especially in China.

A report from fellow analyst house IDC earlier this year predicted that the rise in wearable sales is only set to continue over the next few years, estimating that 126.1 million units will be sold in 2019.

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