Through Cooperation with Google
Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Watch has narrowed its market share gap with Apple Watch. Samsung changed the operating system of Galaxy Watch to the Wear OS in cooperation with Google, and this appears to have paid off.
Counterpoint Research, a market research firm, announced on March 15 that the smartwatch market grew 24 percent in 2021 compared to 2020, and Samsung Electronics stood second with a 10.2 percent share. In 2020, the Korean tech giant ranked third, after Huawei, with an 8.9 percent share. In a year, it ramped up its market share by 1.3 percentage points.
Apple maintained its No. 1 position with a market share of 30.1 percent. However, its market share fell by 2.8 percentage points from 32.9 percent in 2020. The company's average selling price (ASP) ascended 3 percent from 2020.
Samsung changed the Galaxy Watch OS from Tizen, which was developed in-house, to the Wear OS in 2021. Samsung and Google decided to install the Wear OS in the Galaxy Watch to expand the smartwatch ecosystem. The Galaxy Watch's scalability has improved as customers can use various apps in the Google Play Store. Compatibility with other Android-powered smartphones has also improved.
Counterpoint Research said Samsung's smartwatch sales soared 200 percent on year in the third quarter of 2021 when the Galaxy Watch 4, the first model loaded with the Wear OS, was released.
India’s smartwatch market made great strides in 2021. India’s share of the global smartwatch market stood at only 3 percent in 2020. But it quadrupled to 10 percent in 2021. In particular, Noise, India’s No. 1 smartwatch company, logged a 2.6 percent market share, ranking ninth globally. Noise picked up third place in shipments after Apple and Samsung Electronics in areas other than China.
“Smartwatches are growing in popularity as functions to monitor blood pressure, electrocardiogram, and oxygen saturation have been added to them,” said Lim Soo-jung, executive director of Counterpoint Research. “If smartwatches support communication network connections, their attractiveness as an independent wearable device will increase.”