The smartwatch market just experienced its first-ever decline, according to a recent report by Counterpoint. The report says 7% fewer smartwatches were shipped in 2024 than in 2023, and Apple’s dwindling popularity might be to blame.
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According to Counterpoint, tighter competition and weaker upgrade cycles fueled a 19% decline in Apple Watch’s shipment rate during that period.
“Apple Watch witnessed a decline in momentum on its 10th anniversary, despite the launch of the S10 series. The biggest driver of the decline was North America, where the absence of the Ultra 3 and minimal feature upgrades in the S10 lineup led consumers to hold back purchases,” Senior Research Analyst Anshika Jain said in the Counterpoint report.
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There are several reasons why Apple’s smart wearable has seemingly lost its appeal over the past year. From a blood oxygen sensing feature that couldn’t escape patent disputes, to growing competition in the wearables space, the tech behemoth is fighting several forces that could keep its shipments lower.
1. The blood oxygen sensor that never was
Apple lost a patent case last year with the medical company Masimo over its blood oxygen sensor. This caused Apple to remove the feature on its watches, frustrating customers. Several Redditors on the r/AppleWatch thread said they’d consider buying a new Apple Watch once this feature has been reinstated.
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In the meantime, other smartwatches and smart rings are implementing blood oxygen sensors into their wearables, like Huawei’s D2 smartwatch. The Chinese brand saw a 35% increase in shipments year over year, according to Counterpoint’s report.
2. It’s a notification machine
A few weeks ago, I spoke with a friend at a tech event who was wearing an Apple Watch and a Whoop on his wrist. Why, I asked, was he wearing both? The Whoop, he explained, was great at tracking activity and recovery and monitoring his health, while the Apple Watch functioned simply as a notification machine.
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Now, one of Apple Watch’s purposes is to track your health. However, the brand has developed several features beyond health tracking that allow the watch to function more as a mini smartphone and less as a health monitor. You can answer calls on the watch, send texts, set timers and reminders, and navigate maps. You don’t need one of Apple’s newest watches to perform these tasks. In fact, generations-old Apple Watches can do such things — and the devices tend to have longer life cycles than smartphones. This longevity may delay customers’ purchase of the newest generation.
3. Brands are developing impressive competing products
Sleep tracking is big business, and the Apple Watch lags behind some industry standards. Unlike Whoop and Garmin smartwatches, or smart rings like Oura, Galaxy Ring, or Ultrahuman, the Apple Watch doesn’t offer users sleep, readiness, or activity scores, even though it’s collecting vitals data around the clock. Its sleep features, like Sleep Apnea Detection, are useful for those who want to learn whether they snore, but what about everyday use?
Apple comes close to developing a functionality that encourages constant use through the Vitals App on the Apple Watch. It displays information like your time spent asleep, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, and blood oxygen, and ranks them based on high, typical, or low ranges. Users can see this across a daily, weekly, or monthly timeline. However, Apple needs to develop more extensive sleep-tracking features that encourage everyday check-ins to paint an expansive picture and incentivize healthy habits. Access to those kinds of features explains why scoring mechanisms are so useful.
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The tech giant could take notes from Whoop, Oura, or Garmin to deliver software that effectively displays a user’s sleep health, and provides them behavioral insights into, say, whether they’re a morning person or night owl, how they historically handle stress, or gamify sleep scores to encourage better, consistent rest. These personalized insights and summaries that contextualize user data would create a more tailored experience and boost regular use.
