Android Wear To Enjoy Increase In Sales, Per IDC

The Apple Watch may be the most popular wearable device in the planet right now, but before the end of the 2010s, Android smartwatches should be able to catch up. Apple’s smartwatch has almost single handedly made wearable devices cool (or at least, more visible now), but the industry can not get into full swing unless other players start to introduce smartwatches and other wearables that mobile users can choose from.

This is where Android Wear devices come in. The Apple Watch is Apple’s sole smartwatch offering, but Android Wear has lots of brand names under its belt, which is why it could see some improvement in its sales once consumers decide to make wearable devices must have items, just like smartphones.

Market research firm International Data Corp (IDC) certainly thinks so. In the forecast it recently released this week, IDC is projecting that for 2015, the Apple Watch and its WatchOS software should dominate the wearables market, accounting for 13.9 million units of shipments and 58.3 percent market share, respectively. Android Wear will manage 4.1 million units of shipments and a 17.4 percent market share.

However near the end of this decade, IDC predicts that Apple’s market share will have stabilized just below 50 percent (specifically 47.4 percent), with shipments of 40.3 million units. Android Wear’s market share will surge to 38.4 percent, with shipments of 32.6 million units by the year 2019. As for other wearable devices, they will remain behind the industry leaders. Pebble, for example, will achieve shipments of 2.6 million units in 2019, while its market share declines to 3 percent. Samsung’s Tizen will ship 1.8 million units by 2019, while its market share will be 2.2 percent. 

Even before Apple introduced its Apple Watch to the market, smartwatches have already been around for a number of years. Of course, none of them ever managed to gain as much following as the iPhone maker’s wearable device. The release of the Apple Watch also galvanized other mobile manufacturers into introducing new and improved versions of their existing smartwatches. For instance, Samsung recently announced its Gear S2 smartwatch, the South Korean tech giant’s seventh smartwatch offering but the first that features a round watch face. Motorola also recently redesigned its Moto 360 smartwatch, turning its popular wearable device (the best selling smartwatch before the Apple Watch) into more of a fashion timepiece.

But despite some improved awareness, smartwatch technology is still in its infancy, and these devices are still very dependent on smartphones in order to function. But once they acquire the capability to work on their own, IDC believes that these devices will become as popular as today’s smartphones and tablets.