A new report from Counterpoint Research shows that smartwatch shipments jumped 35 percent year on year in Q1 2021, with the Apple Watch capturing a third of the market in terms of shipment volumes.

Apple continued to lead the smartwatch market with a 50 percent YoY increase in Apple Watch shipments, led by the Apple Watch Series 6. The strong performance led Apple to capture 33.5 percent of the wearables market in Q1 2021, up from 30.3 percent in Q1 2020.

Apple’s watchOS was also the most popular smartwatch platform, with Google’s Wear OS nowhere to be found. While watchOS had over 33 percent market share, Wear OS had a paltry 4 percent share in Q1 2021. With Google unveiling a new version of Wear OS, the market share of the company’s smartwatch platform could change in the coming months.

Read: The First 10 Things To Do With Your New Apple Watch

Samsung also saw its smartwatch shipments rise by 27 percent YoY in Q1 2021, thanks to the popularity of the Galaxy Watch 3 and the Galaxy Watch Active. However, the company’s growth was below the market average, and its overall market share dipped to 8 percent from 8.5 percent in Q1 2020.

Surprisingly, Huawei continued to remain the second-largest smartwatch vendor capturing 8.4 percent of the market share in Q1 2021. This is despite the company’s mobile business bearing the brunt of the US-China trade wars. Huawei is expected to launch its first smartwatch running its own HarmonyOS early next month. It would be interesting to see what kind of success the company meets with the new OS.

Our Take

The success of the Apple Watch and watchOS should not come as a surprise to anyone. Apple has been rapidly developing watchOS and adding new health sensors to the Apple Watch lineup to make it more useful.

As things stand right now, no other smartwatch in the market can rival the Apple Watch in terms of features and health tracking.