IDC: China Becomes the Largest Wrist-Worn Device Market, Leading Global Growth

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

According to the latest Worldwide Wearables Quarterly Tracker released by International Data Corporation (IDC), the global wrist-worn device market shipped 139.0 million units in the first three quarters of 2024, a year-over-year decline of 1.0%, mainly due to the homogenization of competition and market saturation in India and the United States. China's wrist-worn device market shipped 45.8 million units, a Year-over-year increase of 20.1%. As the largest market for wrist-worn device shipments, China led the global growth.

The wrist-worn device market includes smartwatches and wristband products. Among them, the smartwatch market will ship 112.2 million units globally in the first three quarters of 2024, a year-over-year decrease of 3.8%. China’s smartwatch market shipped 32.9 million units, marking a year-over-year increase of 23.3%. The wristband market shipped 26.8 million units globally in the same period, a year-over-year increase of 12.7%. China’s wristband market shipped 12.9 million units, showing a year-over-year increase of 12.6%.

Huawei

In the first three quarters of this year, Huawei ranked first in cumulative shipments in the global wrist-worn market, with significant year-over-year growth. In the third quarter, Huawei's new watches GT5 and GT5 Pro, as well as the second-generation blood pressure monitor WATCH D2, were launched, featuring the TruSense System for the first time, improving the convenience of health monitoring experience and the richness and accuracy of monitoring data. Since the beginning of this year, Huawei has achieved continuous and stable growth in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa markets by strengthening its localization strategy and building a global brand image.

Apple

With the launch of the new Series 10, Apple's smartwatch temporarily returned to the first place in the wrist-worn market in the third quarter. However, with the fierce competition of smartwatches worldwide, Apple has been challenged by products from more price segments in the wrist-worn business. Although Apple Watch still ranks first in the global smartwatch market, it still needs to introduce more innovative designs to continue to lead the industry.

Xiaomi

In the third quarter, the new Xiaomi Band 9 was launched and brought a good market response, and its products made many upgrades in screen brightness, battery capacity, and sports health functions, which significantly increased Xiaomi's overall wrist-worn market shipments. In addition, the Xiaomi Watch S series has also ushered in iterations and continues to make efforts to the mid-to-high-end market. The outstanding performance of Xiaomi's mobile phone and vehicle business also helped its brand lift and voice in the wrist-worn market.

Samsung

Samsung's 7th generation products were shipped in the third quarter, driving its continued growth this year. In addition, the launch of the new Ultra fills its gap in the high-end smartwatch market. The FE version increased its shipments in the third quarter, becoming the entry-level layout product of its smartwatch. Combined with the wristband product Fit3 launched at the beginning of the year, Samsung has further subdivided its product line layout this year, fully covering the wrist-worn market from wristbands to smartwatches, bringing more choices to consumers and effectively improving its overall shipments.

BBK

BBK mainly deals with kids' watch products in the wrist-worn market and ranks first in China's kids' watch market. In addition, on the basis of the continuous growth of the Chinese market, BBK is also actively expanding overseas emerging markets and strengthening channel cooperation and expansion in many countries and regions through the overseas brand IMOO.

Performance of China's wrist-worn market in the first three quarters:

Influenced by strong consumer demand for sports and health, the market for smartwatches and wristbands grew significantly over the past year. Such demand will continue to grow as residents' requirements for quality of life and experience improve. In 2025, China's wrist-worn market shipments are expected to be 62.5 million units, a year-over-year increase of 3.2%, which will show the following characteristics:

1.  The health monitoring function will be further improved

With the development of sensing and AI technology, the health monitoring function of smartwatches will be further improved in terms of data richness and accuracy, and more applications and related products may appear for blood pressure.

2.  The channel structure shows different trends online and offline

The diversification of online channels brings greater challenges and opportunities to vendors in channel management. Offline channels are more concentrated in central stores, and peripheral channels may be more affected by the decrease in foot traffic and the development of online channels.

3.  Personalized accessory stats will be further enhanced

Wrist-worn products will receive more attention in terms of appearance design and DIY capabilities, highlighting their delicate beauty and playability as accessories. This is conducive to the expansion of this type of product to a wider audience, which includes sports enthusiasts, fashion groups, and businesspeople.

Sophie Pan , Research Director of IDC China, believes that the wrist-worn market is affected by the launch of new products by leading manufacturers, and the share of mid- and high-price segments has rebounded. However, it has become a recent trend for manufacturers' product lines to segment and gradually cover a wider audience. The current market is dominated by price and channel-driven, and product strength will be further enhanced by new technological innovations. With the advantages of fitting the wrist to the hand, wrist-worn devices may have more opportunities for exploration and development in AI multimodal interaction in the future.