China Wearable Device Market Picked Up 4.1% YoY in 2Q20

IDC’s China Wearable Device Market Quarterly Tracker Report, Second Quarter of 2020 (2Q20) shows that China’s wearable device market shipped 26.58 million units in 2Q20, an increase of 4.1% year over year (YoY). The shipment of basic wearable devices (wearable devices that do not support third-party applications) reached 22.24 million units, an increase of 6.1% YoY, and the shipment of smart wearable devices reached 4.35 million units, a YoY decrease of 4.9%.

With the sports watch GT2 and the truly wireless headset Free buds 3, Huawei not only increased its market share in the watch and Bluetooth headset market, but also consolidated its top position in the overall wearable device market. Although Xiaomi still sits firmly on the top of the wristband market, the new wristband products have limited impact on overall performance. For example, the Mi Band 5 made only a small contribution to shipments this quarter due to its late launch time. Moreover, Xiaomi is in a new product switching period in the Bluetooth headset product line, and has not yet made further breakthroughs. Apple ranked third in the second quarter. The AirPods and Apple Watch series products were driven by the June promotion season. The shipment for the accumulated demand in the first half of the year was also released in this quarter and shipments continued to grow. In the children’s watch market, BBK’s Xiaotiancai and Qihoo 360 were still affected by insufficient market demand, and their shipments showed varying degrees of decline YoY.

In 2Q20, with the exception of the children’s watch market, most product in China’s wearable device market recovered significantly. Among them, the market for earwear and adult watches significantly exceeded the market size of the same period last year. As far as the wrist-worn products are concerned, as the market growth of wristbands gradually slowed down, watches had strong development momentum by virtue of their advantages such as optimized battery life and diversified functions, becoming the favorite wearables of more consumers.

Driven by watch products, wrist-worn wearable devices have shown booming growth momentum in the consumer market. The upgrade of sensor and algorithm technology not only continued to attract more users to try or update their wrist-worn devices, but also promoted data monitoring. On the basis of diversified types, it provides more possibilities for future service expansion in fitness, health, and even medical treatment. The link between the wrist-worn wearable device market and the fitness, health, and healthcare industries will become an important direction for enhancing the added value of equipment and expanding equipment marketing channels going forward.

1. Cooperation with Sports Application Services

The watch market is developing rapidly, and the wristband market is still attractive to a wider audience in terms of cost performance. Particularly in terms of cooperation with fitness applications and services, the cost advantage of wristband has made them the product of choice in many cases. Real-time understanding of changes in members’ physical indicators through bracelet products, as well as tracking and analysis, have become one of the ways for more and more offline gyms to enhance member adherence. In addition, fitness applications with large-scale users have gradually launched their own branded wristband products to create a closed loop of sports scene services, such as Keep.

2. Cooperation with Large Health Industry Institutions

Wrist-worn wearable devices have gradually begun to cooperate with the healthcare and insurance industries to increase the interactive experience of their users and enhance their value-added services. At the same time, regulated healthcare and insurance companies can provide more data analyses and application scenarios for wearable wrist-worn devices and further expand marketing channels.

3. Cooperation with Professional Healthcare Institutions

The cooperation between wrist-worn equipment products and professional healthcare institutions has gradually become the trend of market development. Professional healthcare institutions can improve the data accuracy and professionalism of wrist-worn device products, and cooperation with emerging technology industries will provide more trial cases for the digital transformation of the traditional healthcare industry. Watches have more advantages in terms of the richness of data monitoring and the access experience of service functions, so they have become the product of choice in most cases of cooperation with professional healthcare institutions.

IDC China Research Manager，Sophie Pan believes that,.

in the post-pandemic era, fitness and healthcare have become important development directions for wearable devices in the mobility applications. While the pandemic is stimulating the demand growth, manufacturers are also vital in cultivating the consumers’ demand. As the hardware’s functionality continues to expand, the expansion of the service-based functions around the fitness and healthcare applications do not only enhance the value and credibility of the hardware but also drive the overall market growth.

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