Xiaomi Beats Apple; Overtakes Fitbit, Apple To Become World’s Largest Wearable Brand

Chinese electronics major Xiaomi has beaten both Fitbit & Apple single-handed to become the undisputed leader of wearables, globally. This marks a major transformation the still-nascent wearable market, which was dominated by Fitbit till now.

Apple, which tried to induce a coup in this market has suffered a major setback as well, because they had pinned lots of hope into making their Apple Watches a global phenomenon, just like their iPods, iPhones and MacBooks.

We are not calling Xiaomi beating Apple as a defeat, because if we dig into the numbers, then we will find that Apple has performed indeed well, beating their own expectations. But the marketing gimmicks of Xiaomi, and their relentless focus on the price factor propelled them to beat World’s most valuable technology company by a fair margin.

But yes, for Fitbit, this is a major defeat, as they saw their market share sliding drastically in the last quarter, giving way to Xiaomi to become the global leader of wearables.

Changing Dynamics Of Wearable Market

For Q2 2017, Xiaomi managed to ship 3.7 million units of wearables, thus becoming the single largest player of the segment by capturing 17.1% market share.

As per data released by Strategy Analytics, in the same period, Fitbit managed to ship 3.4 million units, whereas Apple shipped 2.8 million units, to be placed at  No. 3 position.

If we compare to last year, then for the same period, Xiaomi shipped 3 million units, thereby recording 22% year on year rise in the total number of shipments.

On the same hand, Fitbit had shipped 5.7 million units in Q2 2016, which has now reduced to 3.4 million, thereby registering a massive drop of 67% in year to year comparison. This difference has been grabbed by both Xiaomi and Apple to increase their market share.

If we talk about Apple, then they had shipped 1.8 million units last year for the same period, which has now increased to 2.8 million units, thereby increasing by 55%.

What Is The Future?

Strategy Analytics is quite bullish on Apple, because of the launch of their next model of Apple Watch, which promises some great features which includes the next generation of fitness tracking.

Steven Waltzer, Industry Analyst at Strategy Analytics said, “However, the rumoured upcoming Watch Series 3 launch with enhanced health tracking could prove to be a popular smartwatch model and enable Apple to reclaim the top wearables spot later this year.”

Fitbit’s lack of innovation is proving to be costly for them. They had planned to launch their much-hyped smart watch, which was supposed to rival Apple Watch and Samsung Gear S3. But due to production issues, their launch is still pending.

On the other hand Xiaomi has managed to induce some cool features into the fitness bands, and providing them at a cheap cost, which enabled them sell more units. Features such heart-rate monitors, step-counters and calendar alerts have proven to be a huge hit with their user base.

Overall, 22 million of wearables were sold globally the Q2 of 2017, registering an increase of 8% compared to last year.