Apple Watches Overtake Fitbit Shipments

The Apple Watch had more shipments than Fitbit in 2017, overtaking the fitness tracker company becoming the leader in global wearables.

Apple Watch shipments for 2017 were at 17.7 million jumping ahead of Fitbit with its shipment sales at 15.4 million.

In the previous year, Fitbit sold 22.5 million units double of Apple’s 11.3 million.

IDC says total wearable sales for Q4 2017 were up by 7.7 per cent at 37.9 million units compared to the 35.2 million units. Shipments for the whole year were up 10.3 per cent at 115.4 million units from 104.6 million units.

Ramon T Llamas, research director for wearabes at IDC says, “Interest in smartwatches continues to grow and Apple is well-positioned to capture demand.

“User tastes have become more sophisticated over the past several quarters and Apple pounced on the demand for cellular connectivity and streaming multimedia. What will bear close observation is how Apple will iterate upon these and how the competition chooses to keep pace.”

Fitbit shares dropped by 14 per cent last week after the company reported its fifth straight quarter of losses. This is due to poor sales for its latest smartwatch, the Ionic as it did not gather as much buzz as the company has hoped.