Apple Watch clocks up two thirds of market

Apple dominated 2015 smartwatch market on back of 12 million shipments, says Canalys

Despite persistent reports that the Apple Watch hasn't been the roaring success the vendor expected, estimates suggest it dominated the smartwatch market last year.

According to analyst Canalys, some 12 million Apple Watches shipped last year, meaning it accounted for two out of every three smartwatches sold.

The fruity timepiece's debut wasn't universally declared a success - and some channel figures saw the whole werables sector as the flop of 2015 - but Canalys figures suggest Apple cashed in on holiday sales to ship five million Apple Watches in Q4.

Samsung returned to second place in the final quarter of 2015 after consumers lapped up its Gear S2, Canalys said, with Pebble and Huawei - which has established itself as the top Android Wear outfit - rounding out the top four.

Within the wider wearable band market, basic bands remain a bigger seller than smartwatches in unit terms.

Some 37 million basic bands shipped in 2015, a sub-category "comfortably led" by Fitbit. Second-placed Xiaomi shipped 12 million last year, meaning it is tied with Apple for second place in the overall wearable band market.

"Software increasingly belongs on the wrist, and this is the direction the market is going," said analyst Daniel Matte. "As the next step along this path, the Fitbit Blaze is the right product for the company to develop. It is competitively priced and is still being squarely focused on fitness."

Total wearable band shipments shot up 60 per cent sequentially in Q4, Canalys said.