Apple's shipments of wearables continued to grow year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021, but the company lost overall market share to smaller rivals, according to newly-published IDC data.
Companies shipped a total of 104.6 million units in the first quarter of this year, marking a 34.4 percent increase from the 77.8 million units shipped at the same time last year. This is also the first time that first-quarter shipments have topped 100 million units worldwide.
While market leaders like Apple and Samsung maintained their lead during the quarter, most of the growth came from smaller companies like BoAt.
Apple started 2021 the same way it ended 2020: as the clear leader in the worldwide wearables market. Appetite for its smartwatches remained strong with the less expensive SE and Series 3 gaining further traction in the market while its earwear – inclusive of AirPods and Beats – showed sequential declines after reaching record levels in 4Q20.
Although Apple sold five million more wearables in the first quarter of 2021 and stayed the market leader, it lost 3.5 percent overall market share to competitors, most of which were much smaller.
IDC wearables data includes both smartwatches, such as the Apple Watch, and earwear, such as AirPods. Apple does not provide specific breakdowns of the number of Apple Watch and AirPods models shipped, so IDC's data is based on estimates.
During an earnings call earlier this, Apple said that wearables set a new revenue record in the first fiscal quarter of 2021. Apple's wearables business is now the size of a Fortune 120 company.
Wednesday December 10, 2025 2:52 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you.
Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once...
Apple has ordered 22 million OLED panels from Samsung Display for the first foldable iPhone, signaling a significantly larger production target than the display industry had previously anticipated, ET News reports.
In the now-seemingly deleted report, ET News claimed that Samsung plans to mass-produce 11 million inward-folding OLED displays for Apple next year, as well as 11 million...
Friday December 5, 2025 9:40 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below.
Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the ...
Thursday December 11, 2025 8:49 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple seeded the second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to developers earlier this week, meaning the update will be released to the general public very soon.
Apple confirmed iOS 26.2 would be released in December, but it did not provide a specific date. We expect the update to be released by early next week.
iOS 26.2 includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, such as a new...
Monday December 8, 2025 4:54 am PST by Tim Hardwick
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Apple today seeded the second release candidate version of iOS 26.2 to developers and public beta testers, with the software coming one week after Apple seeded the first RC. The release candidate represents the final version iOS 26.2 that will be provided to the public if no further bugs are found.
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Monday December 1, 2025 2:40 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth...
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Apple's chipmaking chief Johny Srouji has reportedly indicated that he plans to continue working for the company for the foreseeable future.
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I wouldn’t call the rest competitors, any more than I consider a fire tablet an iPad competitor. Apple probably faces more ”competition” from older generations of their products than anywhere else in the market.
In the end, there is no smartwatch market, only an apple watch market.
Apple Watch: poor battery life. Now I'm wearing a sport band which only needs to be charged twice a month
I went the other way - wore a fitness band for a couple couple years, then switched to an Apple Watch.
For me, it turned out the notifications were a bigger deal than counting steps... plus the fitness bands I'd used (from Garmin and from Fitbit) didn't seem to last for more than a year. My first Apple Watch was still going strong after three years - I bought a new one, and my brother is happily using my old one.
The Watch's workout tracking is pretty poor, and really not much better than what my iPhone can do.
That's utter crap. The workout tracking is quite impressive under all circumstances, especially for a multi-purpose item. Show me your BPM's with your iPhone while running...
Apple never cared about market share. They care about profits and they continue to make more money off their products than any other company on the planet.
Two things I really wanted to buy from Apple but didn't: Apple Watch: poor battery life. Now I'm wearing a sport band which only needs to be charged twice a month Homepod: poor connectivity.
There are 2 full size homepods and 2 homepod minis in my house they all function without any issues and charging the watch once a day isn’t a big deal. Most people don’t even wear regular watch 24/7 so placing it on the charger everyone it’s not being worn isn’t a problem. When you consider the functionality of the Apple Watch vs the devices that have more battery life is almost incomparable
Somewhere out there - at a coffee shop, there is someone on a phone call with their iPhone, wearing AirPods, and a Apple Watch, drawing on their iPad with an Apple Pencil, checking email on their Macbook, which fits in a bag or backpack that contains an AirTag. Oh wait that’s me.
