Worldwide wearables market grows 14% in Q2, Apple leads: IDC

The worldwide market for wearable devices grew 14.1 per cent during the second quarter of this year due to strong demand for hearables, according to a new report from International Data Corporation (IDC).

Apple continued to dominate the worldwide wearables market as its share rose to 34.2 per cent in Q2 from 31.1 per cent a year ago, the data showed on Monday.

Huawei grabbed the second position as its share in the market rose to 12.6 per cent in Q2 from 9.1 per cent a year ago.

Xiaomi (11.8 per cent), Samsung (8.3 per cent) and Fitbit (2.9 per cent) rounded up the top five positions in the market.

While the total wearables market ballooned to 86.2 million units during the quarter, the growth was unevenly spread across the various form factors, showed the data from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker.

"Around the world, many organizations have also started to use wearables to help the fight against Covid-19," Jitesh Ubrani, Research Manager for IDC Mobile Device Trackers, said in a statement.

"Not only are wearables being used to track symptoms, but also to warn wearers when social distance isn't being maintained."

Hearables grew 32.6 per cent and accounted for 60 per cent of all wearables during the quarter, said the report.

Apple led the charge here as it managed to ship 23.7 million Airpods and Beats products, followed by Samsung and Xiaomi.

This category continues to be dominated by smartphone brands as the opportunity to bundle remains high while traditional headphone makers such as Sony, Bose, Jabra, and others rank lower but focus on the premium end of the market.

Earworn wearables continue to be popular as people work/learn from home and require hearables to maintain privacy while remaining connected with their various devices and services.

Watches and wristbands represented 39.2 per cent of all shipments, down from 46.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2019.

Combined, shipments for these devices declined 4.4 per cent from last year and totaled 33.7 million units.

The top vendors -- Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi -- gained share and dominance while many other vendors struggled to convince consumers that these devices are "must haves" during an economic downturn, IDC said.