Believe it or not, the Pixel Watch is a hit! At least that’s according to new data from Canalys, which puts Google in second place in terms of global wearables market share in the fourth quarter of 2022. Canalys’ “wearable wristband”market category includes smartwatches, “conventional watches”and “conventional wristbands”. from all major technology companies.
In the report, Google holds an 8 percent market share in the fourth quarter of 2022, which is good enough to rank just behind Apple’s dominant 27.5 percent of shipments. Google was in fourth place at this time last year, and Canalys credits “smartwatch growth of 16% with the release of its Pixel Watch”as the reason Google moved up to second place.
By the way, selling Fitbit under Google is a disaster. Even with a 16 percent increase in smartwatch sales over the Pixel Watch, Google’s overall wearable shipments were actually down 25 percent year-over-year thanks to what the report calls “Fitbit’s shrinking shipments.”So far, Google’s only plans for Fitbit are to gut the company. Google is assimilating Fitbit accounts sometime this year and has already announced it will be shutting down fitness gamification favorites – Challenges and Adventures – later this month. The company also removed Google Assistant support from Fitbit smartwatches when it updated the line last August. With existing customers outragedfeature loss, it’s not clear why anyone would play on Fitbit.”
Luckily for Google, the rest of the wearables market has fallen far more than Google’s Fitbit loss. Last year’s No. 2 player, Xiaomi, saw a 46 percent drop in sales. Huawei fell 42 percent. Samsung, in 5th place, lost 35 percent. Even Apple’s sales fell 17 percent, slightly more than the market’s overall 18 percent decline. The drop in sales is largely attributed to the demise of basic fitness trackers, which are experiencing a ninth straight quarter of a 43% year-on-year decline.
Seeing Google’s place anywhere in the global market is a surprise since the company has such little hardware when it comes to worldwide distribution. The Pixel Watch is only sold in nine countries, while the Apple Watch is available in over 60 countries and the Galaxy Watch in at least 31 countries (I couldn’t find an exact number). Google’s tiny distribution network makes it hard to hit any of the market share charts.
Distribution issues aside, there’s a lot of room for Google to improve the supposed second-gen Pixel Watch. Pixel Watch is too expensive compared to the competition. There is still no comprehensive selection of watch bands from the first manufacturers, although metal bands will be available sometime this year. Google has also made buying the Pixel Watch an expensive hassle, as it’s the only major watch supplier that doesn’t let you choose a watchband at the checkout, forcing everyone to pay extra for a standard rubber watchband. These are all first-generation fixable issues that give us reason to wait.