Wear OS barely makes a dent in North America’s wearable market as Samsung grows

Ben Schoon | Aug 15 2019 - 11:49 am PT

In Q2 of 2019, North America’s wearable market saw growth of nearly 40% which brought its value up to $2 billion. Driving a big portion of that growth was that of Samsung’s Galaxy lineup, and as you’d probably expect, Wear OS made barely any impact.

Canalys breaks down the wearables market growth in North America with Apple unsurprisingly on top with its successful Apple Watch. During Q2, the company shipped 2.9 million units to make up 37.9% of the market, also seeing over 30% growth compared to 2018.

Samsung was the clear winner in terms of growth, though. The company saw a 121% jump over 2018 with roughly 800,000 units shipped over the quarter. That makes up 10.6% of the market as a whole. It’s not clear if one specific model helped here, but the $199 Galaxy Watch Active likely had some impact.

The biggest player in Wear OS, Fossil Group, shipped around 300,000 units by comparison. That makes up just 4.1% of the market. However, on the bright side of things, Fossil did see 34% year-over-year growth in the US. That’s better than how it performed on the global market in Q1, where it lost market share. Still, with its biggest brand barely making it into the top 5, it’s clear that Wear OS is hardly making a dent in the wearable market right now even if you consider that a portion of the “others” includes brands such as Mobvoi, Casio, Montblanc, and more.

Things are starting to look up a bit, however. In the past few weeks, Fossil announced new and improved smartwatches while Mobvoi, another popular Wear OS maker, announced its first LTE-enabled wearable which works with Verizon. Still, it will likely be a while before Wear OS is really closing the gap with Samsung and Apple, if it ever does.