The global smartwatch market has seen significant year on year growth from Q2 2020 to Q2 of 2021, according to a new report by Counterpoint. While Apple maintained its lead, Samsung has snuck up behind and overtaken Chinese smartwatch maker Imoo to claim the third spot with a 7.6% market share.

Apple still sits ahead of the pack with 28%, down from 30.1% in Q2 2020. Huawei is currently in second place, but not by much. Its current 9.3% market share is down 3.8% from the 13.1% it held last year.

Counterpoint cites the popularity of the Galaxy Watch 3 and Watch Active 2 as the main proponents for Samsung’s growth. The fact that Samsung has switched from its Tizen operating system to Wear OS for feature devices will also affect its future wearable popularity. Our guess would be for the better. Along with Samsung, Garmin also experienced tremendous growth, a 62% increase over last year.

It seems like the fall-off for Huawei’s smartphone business has affected its sales, which makes sense. The company’s smartwatches are highly optimised for use within its ecosystem, so when one side drops off thanks to US-imposed trade bans, so will the other.

The ebbs and flow of the smartwatch market

On a broader scale, the global smartwatch market as a whole saw a 27% year on year growth. Counterpoint’s report attributes this to the fact that the global pandemic has “pushed consumers towards being more health-conscious and features such as SPo2 and heart rate monitoring have trickled down to the sub-$100 segment.”

“The proliferation of sub-$100 affordable, feature-rich smartwatches from Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, realme and OPPO, and Indian brands such as boAt and Noise has been one of the key growth drivers,” said senior analyst Anshika Jain, on the growth of the smartwatch market.