“Cupertino-based Apple has already cornered the market for smartwatches, according to new research on Tuesday,” Matt Clinch reports for CNBC.
“Apple claimed 52 percent of global smartwatch shipments in 2015, according to a new report by research firm Juniper,” Clinch reports. “‘Its popularity far eclipsed that of rival vendors, with (Samsung) Android Wear shipments comprising less than 10 percent of sales for the year,’ the research said. ‘Most other smartwatch sales are currently coming from cheaper, simpler devices from a range of smaller players, such as Martian, X and Razer, the latter with the recently-announced Nabu Watch.’ Market intelligence firm IDC has similar findings on market share, suggesting Apple has over 50 percent of sales with the Pebble smartwatch in second place with just 8 percent.”
“Francisco Jeronimo, research director for European mobile devices at IDC, told CNBC by phone that Apple’s promotional push meant that it was hardly surprising that it was dominating,” Clinch reports. “Jeronimo, like other analysts, is still unsure on a sector that he says is yet to define what its real value proposition is. However, over the longer term he believes services like Apple Pay could garner more interest for the devices and offer a genuine reason to buy a smartwatch.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup. As we wrote of Apple Watch over a year ago:
Apple Pay alone will sell the device. — MacDailyNews, December 30, 2014
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