India's wearables market recorded 14.9 million shipments in 2019: IDC

The wearables market in India recorded an over 168 per cent year-over-year growth in 2019, with shipments touching 14.9 million units, IDC said on Thursday.

Accounting for the largest share of shipment volumes, the earwear category grew five-fold, shipping 8.5 million units, while wrist bands and watches segments touched 5.3 million units and 0.9 million units, respectively.

In the December quarter, wearables vendors shipped a total of 5.1 million units, making it the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in shipments, IDC said.

It was also the biggest quarter for wrist bands with 1.5 million units shipped in a single quarter, witnessing 30.9 per cent year-on-year growth, it added.

"Ear-worn devices have found huge appeal with consumers, who are spoiled for choice with a variety of models at different price points. Affordable neckbands are leading the charge of migration from wired to wireless in this category," IDC India Market Analyst Anisha Dumbre said.

At the same time, truly wireless devices with improved battery life and connectivity are attracting users to spend more, Dumbre added.

"As more vendors entered this segment with affordable options, the average selling price (ASP) of the category came down to USD 39 in 2019 from USD 63 a year ago, resulting in massive growth in this category," Dumbre said.

IDC India's Associate Research Manager (Client Devices) Jaipal Singh said the wearables market is in a state of flux with new form factors and brands entering every few months.

"India is still underpenetrated when it comes to the adoption of wearables for health. Growing concerns around lifestyle diseases, have certainly helped wearables to get initial traction for weight control and physical activity monitoring," he said.

He added that the market, however, is yet to scale beyond the key cities.

"Vendors will need to continue to experiment in this segment to explore scalable opportunities," he said.

Xiaomi remained the dominant leader with a 48.9 per cent share in the wrist bands category, while Titan maintained its second position with 14.5 per cent share.

A total of 933,000 units of watches were shipped during the year with a 77.5 per cent growth. Smartwatches continued to lead the watch category with 61.1 per cent share in 2019.

In the smartwatch category, Fossil was the leading vendor with 30.3 per cent share, followed by Apple (26.6 per cent). Huami led the basic watch category.

Homegrown brand BoAt Lifestyle led the earwear segment with 27.3 per cent market share. In the truly wireless segment, Apple continued to lead the segment with its AirPods range, garnering 43.1 per cent market share in 2019.