Wear OS is growing quickly, will ship roughly half as many units as Apple Watch this year

Google’s Wear OS spent years on the back burner, barely holding on with the help of a couple of brands. But the platform has seen renewed focus over the past couple of years and, now, that’s paying off, as Wear OS is set to make up just shy of 30% of the smartwatch market this year.

A new report from Counterpoint Research offers data from 2023 and an estimate for 2024 around smartwatch shipments globally, excluding China.

In 2023, the Apple Watch made up 53% of smartwatches shipped while Wear OS grew into the number two spot with 21% of the market. But, going into 2024, it’s estimated that Apple’s numbers will dip a bit down to 49%, with Wear OS to grow to 27%. That’d put Wear OS selling a little over half the number of smartwatches as Apple ships, and would also put the OS on one out of every four smartwatches sold this year.

That’s a far cry from years past where, even just looking at the US, Wear OS barely made up 10% of shipments for a while, and only started growing when Samsung made the switch.

Counterpoint says it expects Wear OS to continue growing not just because of Samsung, but also as Google’s Pixel Watch continues to push sales alongside new offerings such as the OnePlus Watch 2 that debuted this year.

Interestingly, though, the story is very different in China, where Huawei’s HarmonyOS makes up the bulk of smartwatches shipped. It’s estimated that over 60% of smartwatches shipped in China this year will be running Huawei’s OS.

More on Wear OS:

• Are Wear OS Tiles for Google Messages and Wallet coming? 
• Verizon is raising the price of smartwatch plans
• Google confirms Wear OS 5 and Android TV updates are coming, more at I/O

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