Reports: Xiaomi tops Indian wearable market in Q3 2018

Riding on the success of its Mi Band 3 fitness tracker, Xiaomi has maintained its leadership in the country’s wearables market with a 41 percent market share in the third quarter of this year, the International Data Corp (IDC) said on Thursday.

GOQii continues to hold the second position with a healthy 47 percent year-over-year growth and 19 percent market share in Q3 in 2018, showed the report.

Xiaomi and GOQii are followed by TitanNSE -1.58 %, Samsung and Fossil in terms of market share.

The overall wearables shipments declined 11 percent from the previous quarter largely because of the double-digit decline in the basic wearables, showed data from IDC’s “Quarterly Wearables Tracker”.

“It is too early to say that the India wearables market has started moving towards the smart wearables,” said Jaipal Singh, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India.

“However, vendors have started analyzing the big pricing gaps between the basic and smart wearables,” Singh said.

The overall India wearables market saw a 17 percent year-over-year (YoY) growth in the third quarter of the year as vendors shipped a total of 897,000 units in the country, the report said.

The smart wearables, generally defined as wearables which can run third-party applications on its own, saw two successive quarters of double-digit growth and shipped 102,000 units in Q3 2018, making it the first quarter to cross the 100,000 units shipment mark in the country, the report said.

“While vendors need to identify a new pricing sweet spot for smartwatches, the next challenge is to address the positioning of watches which is still seen as a vanity product in India,” Singh said.

“Also, many vendors haven’t explored the kid segment which can be a volume driver for this category as they are more comfortable with technology and new products,” he added.

Although their shipments witnessed a decline of 20 percent quarter-over-quarter, Xiaomi saw a healthy growth of 77 percent in this quarter when compared to the same time a year ago.

The newly launched Mi band 3 became the most shipped wearable product ever in the history of wearables in India, according to IDC.