Apple maintained its consummate lead in the global wearable products market in the first quarter of this year, based on research conducted by IDC.
According to the report, Apple's lot grew by 13.3 million units, or 59.9 percent year on year, handing it a 23.7 percent share of the market.
Despite difficulties in the supply chain for Apple Watch, the company saw strong results thanks to its Beats and AirPods range (the report treats "hearables" as a subset of wearables).
IDC put the strong demand for AirPods and Beats down to the ongoing health crisis and the increasing number of people working from home who are in need of headphones.
"Consumers were clamouring for these sophisticated earpieces not only for the abilty to playback audio but also to help them increase productivity, as many of them were forced to work from home and sought ways to reduce surrounding noise while staying connected to their smartphones and smart assistants."
Xaiomi came second in place after Apple, with 10.1 million units shipped in the first quater of this year, amounting to 14 percent market share.
Samsung, Huawei, and Fitbit were the other major companies to make up the rest of the wearables market in the report. Global shipments of wearable devices grew 29.7 percent in Q1 2020 compared to Q1 2019, totalling 72.6 million units.
Production of Apple's rumored over-ear wireless headphones is already said to be underway, and Apple's virtual Worldwide Developers Conference in June could be a good opportunity to introduce them.
Apple is also expected to debut Powerbeats Pro in four new Colors soon, so there would appear to be plenty of reasons for Apple to be confident of maintaining its dominance in the wearables market going forward.
Saturday October 18, 2025 11:00 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
iOS 26 was released last month, but the software train never stops, and iOS 26.1 beta testing is already underway. So far, iOS 26.1 makes both Apple Intelligence and Live Translation on compatible AirPods available in additional languages, and it includes some other minor changes across the Apple Music, Calendar, Photos, Clock, and Safari apps.
More features and changes will follow in future ...
Monday October 20, 2025 10:57 am PDT by Juli Clover
With the fourth betas of iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, and macOS 26.1, Apple has introduced a new setting that's designed to allow users to customize the look of Liquid Glass.
The toggle lets users select from a clear look for Liquid Glass, or a tinted look. Clear is the current Liquid Glass design, which is more transparent and shows the background underneath buttons, bars, and menus, while tinted ...
Sunday October 19, 2025 7:39 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
iOS 26.4 is expected to introduce a revamped version of Siri powered by Apple Intelligence, but not everyone is satisfied with how well it works.
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said some of Apple's software engineers have "concerns" about the overhauled Siri's performance. However, he did not provide any specific details about the shortcomings.
iOS 26.4 will...
Friday October 17, 2025 7:35 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's software engineers continue to internally test iOS 26.0.2, according to MacRumors logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions.
iOS 26.0.2 will be a minor update that addresses bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, but we do not know any specific details yet.
The update will likely be released by the end of next week.
Last month, Apple released iOS 26.0.1,...
Saturday October 18, 2025 10:57 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the new iPad Pro's headline feature is the M5 chip, the device has some other changes, including N1 and C1X chips, faster storage speeds, and more.
With the M5 chip, the new iPad Pro has up to a 20% faster CPU and up to a 40% faster GPU compared to the previous model with the M4 chip, according to Geekbench 6 results. Keep in mind that 256GB and 512GB configurations have a 9-core CPU,...
Monday October 20, 2025 1:55 pm PDT by Juli Clover
With the fourth beta of iOS 26.1, Apple added a toggle that makes Liquid Glass more opaque and reduces transparency. We tested the beta to see where the toggle works and what it looks like.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
If you have the latest iOS 26.1 beta, you can go to Settings > Display and Brightness to get to the new option. Tap on Liquid Glass, then...
Monday October 20, 2025 1:02 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Even though we're at the fourth beta of iOS 26.1, Apple is continuing to add new features. In fact, the fourth beta has some of the biggest changes that we'll get when iOS 26.1 releases to the public later this month. We've rounded up what's new below.
Liquid Glass Transparency Toggle
Apple added a toggle for customizing the look of Liquid Glass. In Settings > Display and Brightness,...
Thursday October 16, 2025 9:13 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro with its next-generation M5 chip, but previous rumors have indicated that the company still plans to announce at least a few additional products before the end of the year.
The following Apple products have at one point been rumored to be updated in 2025, although it is unclear if the timeframe for any of them has...
Monday October 20, 2025 1:42 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Kohler is expanding its line of bathroom products with Dekoda, an iPhone-connected device that's designed to be attached to a toilet rim (via The Verge). The device's included "sensors" point into the toilet bowl, allowing it to analyze what goes on in the bathroom.
According to Kohler, Dekoda is a health tracker that can monitor gut health and hydration, as well as detect the presence of...
I 100% agree with your sentiment that they are completely different product types, but although I can’t point to anything specific I feel like the “wearables” category label was created by Wall Street “analysts” and Apple is now following a standard categorization (albeit a silly one).
Would be interested to know if other forum members can shed some light on the question.
If they wanted to hide sales numbers, then why report anything? They could just do what they do with iPhone and report profits only.
When deciding whether or not to believe something, always test the converse question for plausibility. Why wouldn’t they disclose separate revenue numbers for every individual product? Do they not know them? Don’t bother to track them? Don’t think they’re internally important? None of these ideas comes close to passing the sniff test. Naturally they know them, and much more. They know how many of each model, size, color, and capacity of every iPhone they’ve ever sold. They don’t include those numbers in stockholder calls either. I think they’re trying to strike a balance between revenue guidance and hiding individual product data.
Apple became quite tired of Wall Street analysts falling all over themselves counting iPhone unit sales and average sale prices when the Apple Watch and services began ramping up in unit sales, revenue growth, and increased percentages of overall revenue. The narrative Wall Street kept repeating ad nauseum was “Apple will hit the wall with iPhone sales, they are a one-trick pony, Apple is doomed.” When Apple stopped reporting unit sales data and concentrated on overall sales group revenue and profits, Wall Street cried foul, became angry, and the stock dropped for about 2 months. Meanwhile, Apple reported separate groupings for iPhone, Mac, iPad, “Wearables, Home, and Accessories”, and Services. Savvy investors understood this but many analysts still stuck to their old iPhone or nothing narratives, keeping the stock and PE multiple depressed in the mid teens.
Cook kept telling everyone who would listen in early 2017 that Services would double from $24.3B in 2016 to $50B annually by 2020. In 2019, Apple Services were $46.9B, a 16% change from 2018. Apple will be on its way towards beating that goal in FY 2020, as Cook said they would.
Wearables were $12.8B in 2017, $17.38B in 2018 (36% rise), and $24.48B in 2019 (41%) rise, and itself almost doubling like Services did, no doubt fueled by Watch, AirPods/AirPods Pro, and others. iPhones had dropped 14% in 2019 but it was easy to see, if you were looking, that Apple had successfully began and accelerated their revenue diversification. Apple’s blowout 1Q 2020 and better than expected 2Q 2020 Covid affected report still suggest that change is continuing and the iPhone had been doing better than expected. Over the past 3 quarters, analysts were finally waking up and revising their expectations upward, in concert with recognition that Watch, AirPods and now services was leading growth for Apple.
As for “hiding” product data, most all smartphone makers now “hide” individual model data (Samsung included) and only trumpet sales when it suits them (remember Samsung reporting huge first week or month sales, only to later report quarterly or annually sales of mobile devices, especially flagships, would be lacking in revenue and profits?). It’s the quarterly sales, revenue, profits and gross margin which are most important to show a strong business model, and of course, Apple has been much better and stronger at doing that than any other tech company.
I agree they are trying to balance the narrative for investors and analysts alike without revealing too much to competitors who would love to have even a small slice of Apple’s revenue, profits and success. Why else would they copy so much of Apple’s look, design, and experience if not to coattail somehow on Apple.
I 100% agree with your sentiment that they are completely different product types, but although I can’t point to anything specific I feel like the “wearables” category label was created by Wall Street “analysts” and Apple is now following a standard categorization (albeit a silly one).
Would be interested to know if other forum members can shed some light on the question.
I do not believe this was created by Wall Street. It was created by Apple to, in my opinion, limit the detail of their specific product revenue reporting. The category is actually “wearables, home, and accessories” and its revenue is reported as a single number. The more products they can plausibly bundle into one category, the more individual product sales variances are buffered against one another.
Incredible success story. I know we shouldn't be surprised, but a lot of people wrote Apple off even before the Watch was released, and Series 0 didn't help matters either.