Ron Amadeo
Imagine it or not, the Pixel Watch seems to be a success! At the very least, that is in accordance with new numbers from Canalys, which has Google capturing the No. 2 spot for worldwide wearable band marketshare in This autumn 2022. Canalys’ “wearable band” market class contains smartwatches, “primary watches,” and “primary bands” from all the massive tech firms.
The report has Google at 8 p.c marketshare for This autumn 2022, which is nice sufficient to fit in proper behind Apple’s dominant 27.5 p.c of shipments. Google was in fourth place this time final 12 months, and Canalys credit the “16% smartwatch development with the discharge of its Pixel Watch” as the rationale for Google’s rise to No. 2.
You may say, “Is not the Pixel Watch Google’s first smartwatch, and due to this fact the expansion is from 0 models?” however no, Google also owns Fitbit, which suggests a bunch of product strains just like the FitBit Sense, Versa, and Encourage are getting lumped into the “Google” bucket. Canalys says Google shipped 880,000 Pixel Watches throughout This autumn, so the watch makes up 22 p.c of Google’s 4 million wearables shipments—the remaining remains to be Fitbit.
Fitbit gross sales underneath Google are a catastrophe, by the way in which. Even with that 16 p.c smartwatch development from the Pixel Watch, Google’s total wearables shipments are literally down 25 p.c 12 months over 12 months, because of what the report calls “waning Fitbit shipments.” To date, Google’s solely plans for Fitbit are to intestine the corporate. Google is assimilating Fitbit accounts someday this 12 months and has already saying a shutdown of beloved fitness gamification options—”Challenges” and “Adventures”—later this month. It additionally stripped Fitbit smartwatches of Google Assistant help when it updated the lineup final August. With present prospects outraged over the lack of options, it isn’t clear why anybody would gamble on Fitbit’s future.
Fortunately for Google, the whole remainder of the wearables market is down by way more than Google’s Fitbit losses. Final 12 months’s No. 2 participant, Xiaomi, had gross sales plummet 46 p.c. Huawei is down 42 p.c. Samsung, in fifth place, is down 35 p.c. Even Apple gross sales are down 17 p.c, barely beating the general 18 p.c market decline. Lots of the gross sales decline is defined by the loss of life of primary health trackers, that are seeing their ninth consecutive quarterly decline, down 43 p.c 12 months over 12 months.
Seeing Google place anyplace on a worldwide marketshare chart is a shock, because the firm has such a small {hardware} operation in terms of worldwide distribution. The Pixel Watch is just offered in nine countries, whereas the Apple Watch is accessible in over 60 countries and Galaxy Watches in at least 31 countries (I could not discover an actual quantity). Google’s tiny distribution community makes it exhausting to place a dent in any of the marketshare charts.
In addition to distribution issues, Google has a number of room for enchancment on a presumed second-generation Pixel Watch. The Pixel Watch is too expensive in comparison with the competitors. A complete first-party watch band choice nonetheless does not exist, though someday this 12 months metallic bands shall be an choice. Google additionally made shopping for a Pixel Watch an costly trouble, because it’s the one main watch vendor that does not allow you to decide a watch band at checkout, forcing everybody to pay further for the default rubber watch band. These are all fixable first-generation issues that give us one thing to sit up for.
