China shipped 99 million wearable devices, among them smartwatches, wristbands, and earphones in 2019, a 37.1% jump from the year before, with more than one-fourth of the shipments, about 27 million, delivered in the last quarter of the year, according to the latest report by market researcher IDC.
Xiaomi, Huawei, and Apple, the top three wearable vendors in the country in 2019, had the market under their firm grip. The three companies managed to grab almost two-thirds of the wearable market, with Xiaomi taking the lead with almost one fourth (25.1%) of market share, followed by Huawei (20.4%), and Apple (13.7%).
Driven by the popularity of its AirPods, Apple managed to double its wearables in Q4 2019 from a year earlier, shipping a total of 4.9 million devices. Xiaomi, due to its strength in wristbands, the company’s most-sold wearables, also grew the shipments of its latest model, the MiBand 4, significantly, according to the report.
Wristbands accounted for 73.3%, or a whopping 9.4 million units, out of Xiaomi’s total 2019 Q4 shipments of 12.8 million devices globally, per another IDC report on worldwide wearable markets.
Huawei, thanks to its efforts in both smartwatch and wireless earbuds in recent years, gained the largest year-on-year (YoY) growth in shipments last year. Huawei’s wearables shipments increased by more than 120% in 2019, compared to Xiaomi’s 46%, and Apple’s 65% YoY growth.
The year 2020 might have unfolded with a harsh beginning, but the health crisis is likely to bring a breakthrough to the application scene of healthcare wearable devices, said IDC’s researcher Pan Xuefei.
