Wearable market grew by 35% in Q1 2018, Apple emerges as top vendor

According to a report by Canalys, worldwide wearables market grew 35 percent year on year to 20.5 million units in Q1 2018, driven by strong demand for health-centric devices.

It said that Apple emerged as the top vendor, by shipping 3.8 million Apple Watches while Xiaomi shipped 3.7 million units. Fitbit, Garmin, and Huawei, vendors selling a mixed portfolio of fitness wearables.

Apple Watch shipments stabilized after a record quarter for the company and it matched its Q1 2017.

"Key to Apple's success with its latest Apple Watch Series 3 is the number of LTE-enabled watches it has been able to push into the hands of consumers," said Canalys Senior Analyst Jason Low.

"Operators welcome the additional revenue from device sales and the added subscription revenue for data on the Apple Watch, and the list of operators that sell the LTE Apple Watch worldwide is increasing each month," Jason added.

Smartwatches accounted for 80 percent of wearable band revenue, up from 74 percent in Q1 2017. In terms of shipped units, smartwatches accounted for 43 percent in Q1 2018.

Garmin is now the second largest smartwatch vendor after Apple, with 1 million smartwatches shipped in the last quarter, the firm pointed out that.

"Garmin's transition to smartwatches has been swift as it focuses its GPS expertise on catering to endurance athletes and outdoor enthusiasts," said Vincent Thielke, Research Analyst at Canalys.

Furthermore, Canalys informed that with global smartwatch replacement rates increasing, Fitbit is racing to get its users to upgrade to smartwatches and to attract new users amid fierce competition.

Fitbit is betting on its newly launched Versa smartwatch while introducing female health tracking to expand its addressable market," said Thielke.

However, the firm estimates smartwatches (including the Blaze) made up 24 percent of Fitbit's wearable band shipments.

"Collaboration between Fitbit and Google on the Cloud Healthcare API will help Fitbit get into healthcare systems, and that is a positive move. But Fitbit's immediate cause for concern will be satisfying investors that it is selling more wearables, something it may not be able to do."