Yes, laptops and tablets and smart devices are booming. No, the desktop isn’t dying. But don’t go to sleep on wearable technology.
From the looks of things, smartwatch and fitness tracking devices are very high on consumers’ Christmas lists. In Q3 2015, companies shipped 21 million wearable devices worldwide. That’s almost triple the number of such devices shipped in Q3 2014. Fitbit leads the charge with 22% of the market share, as far as the top five companies are concerned. I’ll get to that later. Apple and Xiaomi placed second and third, with 19 and 17% of the market, respectively. Garmin and BBK round out the top 5 with a combined 7 percent of Q3 2015 market share. But guess which category leads the pack? The ‘others’ lead it. The ‘others’ sold over a third of all wearable technology devices just in the Q3 of this year. The wearable technology boom has made Fitbit a household name, thanks to Fitbit Change and Fitbit Surge. More than 70 of the world’s top Fortune 500 buy from and/or endorse Fitbit. They’re beating Apple, though Apple Watch sales are increasing. Chinese based Xiaomi has grown the fastest. At this time last year, they only shipped 400,000 smartwatches per quarter. Now, they’re selling 3.7 million per quarter. It’s expected smartwatch sales will increase quarter by quarter and year by year.
But what strikes me is how well ‘other’ wearable technology devices are doing. This tells me the door is wide open and the sky is the limit for smartwatches, wrist monitors, and other wearable technology. An relatively young company like Fitbit is beating big and bad Apple in this field. This gives me hope this trend is worth trying. This gives me hope that the American free market economy isn’t dead yet. The smartwatch market today is ripe for anybody to be the next big tech innovator? Will you be that next innovator?