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Fitbit continues to dominate in the US wearable market
Fitness trackers and smartwatches have been around for a few years now, and they show no sign of stopping.
According to a recent survey released by Kantar Worldpanel, 12.2% of all United States consumers own either a fitness band or smartwatch as of March 2016. This is nearly double the adoption rate in the EU4 (Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy), which totals about 6.6%.
Unsurprisingly, three out of four wearable devices on our wrists are fitness trackers. Smartwatches have been around for a few years now, but haven’t been nearly as prominent in our daily lives as fitness trackers. Of the major players in the fitness tracking hardware market, Fitbit has captured almost 62% of the U.S. installed base, whereas Apple accounts for just 6.8% of the market. Shannon Conway, wearable tech analyst for Kantar Worldpanel, says Fitbit has achieved such a feat by “communicating a clear and simple value proposition to consumers.”
[related_videos align=”right” type=”custom” videos=”682235,648417,650695,648705″]The popularity of fitness trackers as a whole isn’t only because they’ve been on the market much longer than smartwatches; gifting also plays a huge role for fitness bands, according to the survey.
You might be surprised to hear that while fitness trackers encompass three out of four wrist wearables in the United States, those numbers are drastically different in the EU4. Market penetration in these four European countries might stand at a comparatively low 6.6%, but 55.2% of those devices are smartwatches, compared to the 22.9% in the U.S. “Of the combined fitness band and smartwatch base [in the EU4], Fitbit remains the most-owned brand at 18.5%, but Apple and Samsung follow closely with 14% and 11.6%, respectively,” said Lauren Guenveur, mobile analyst for Kantar Worldpanel.
The wearable space is still relatively young, and we can only expect these numbers to grow from here. Do you own a fitness tracker or smartwatch? If so, tell us in the comments!