With 5.4 million shipments, Wristables market crosses over Rs 3,800 crore in India in CY 2020

Brands are increasingly expanding their Smart Watch portfolio, contributing 44.1% of the total Wristables shipment for the calendar year.

Gurugram – Thursday March 25, 2021: As per the 1^st edition of techARC’s India Wristables Market Report (part of techARC India Connected Consumer Market Scan Dashboard), 5.4 million Wristables (fitness bands and smart watches) were shipped for the calendar year 2020. This translated in Rs 3,837 crore (US $540 Mn) in terms of value.

Talking about the key industry trend, Faisal Kawoosa, Founder & Chief Analyst, techARC said, “Wristables have become a key smart wearable category for users even beyond health and fitness tracking. For instance, it definitely reduces the frequent unlocking of smartphones to check on notifications and messages, where users don’t necessarily need to respond and are mostly for information only.” “This uptick has also encouraged several OEMs like OPPO, Realme and now OnePlus to foray in category.  I expect OEMs tilting more towards Smart Watches than fitness bands as it gives them more revenue as well as profit margins,” Faisal concluded.

In terms of market standings, Xiaomi and Realme were able to make it to the top 5 leaders by both measures of volumes and value for the calendar year.  By value revenue, Apple and Samsung lead in this space as well owing to their considerably higher price points in comparison to other major competitors who focus on the affordable segment.  Noise, a smart accessories brand which started off with bands, was able to capture 3^rd position by volumes during 2020.

Double clicking the market standings, in the Fitness Bands category, Xiaomi and Realme stood at No 1 and No 2 respectively both in terms of volume and value market measurement.  boAt, a new entrant, emerged in top 5, securing 5^th ranking in volume and value for the calendar year 2020.

Noise led the Smart Watch segment of Wristables followed by Realme and Apple in terms of volume units.  However, by value Noise stood at 4^th with 7% of market share.  By value the Smart Watch segment was led by Apple at 37% followed by Samsung at 18% and Fossil at 10%.

Key Technology Trends

• 22% of the Smart Watches shipped were equipped with e-sim feature.  This attach rate might not significantly change for a while with Apple and Samsung as the key players promoting e-sim in Smart Watches.  Also, users are not keen to have a stand alone cellular connectivity for Smart Watches and see them more as an extension to the Smartphone.
• While Apple and Samsung have WatchOS and Tizen, other players are gradually adopting WearOS by Google following the Smartphone trend where Android by Google is the default OS for most of the OEMs.  We expect WearOS to become the default 3^rd party OS for Smart Watches.
• Health tracking has become more important since the pandemic of Covid-19 surfaced.  As a consequence, SPO2 feature to measure oxygen saturation attach rate is increasing in Wristables.  This will become a mainstream feature going forward.

To know more about the report or book a demo of the India Connected Consumer Market Scan Dashboard, please write to research@techarc.net.