New market research from Parks Associates reveals Apple Watch owners are more engaged with their connected wearable devices than other brands. Three in 10 Apple Watch owners (31%) use voice commands to search for information online on a weekly basis as compared to 19 percent of those who own other smart watch brands, according to Parks’ ¨Leading Smart Watch Apps: Insights into Wearable Use Cases.¨ Trends such as these are contributing to substantial Apple Watch market share gains, researchers found.
Nearly half (45 percent) of Apple Watch owners make or receive phone calls via their wearable connected devices. That compares to 23 percent of those who own other brands.
Apple Watch Market Share
Apple Watch’s U.S. market share shot up to 36 percent just one month after its introduction in 2015, Parks’ research analyst Chris Tweedt noted. “In the year following its launch, this percentage has increased steadily to 39% and will continue to increase after the recent release of the Apple Watch Series 2.¨
A dearth of new models contributed to stagnating smart watch sales in 2016’s first half, but Parks expects sales will be robust over the course of 2016’s holiday sales period.
Parks estimates that 10 percent of U.S. households own a smart watch. Additional highlights of its latest market research include:
- 50% of Apple Watch owners check the weather on a weekly basis, compared to 29% of non-Apple smart watch owners.
- Only 29% of non-Apple smart watch owners reply to notifications with their device each week, while 56% of Apple Watch owners do so.
- Parks Associates identified three emerging smart watch app trends, including IoT, monitoring for insurance, and mobile wallet expansion.
“Increasing sales have expanded smart watch app development,” Tweedt said. “The Apple Watch, for example, announced that 10,000 apps were available for the watch just a little over four months after launch, while Android Wear has over 4,000 available apps. The two primary smart watch use cases are fitness tracking and notifications, but use cases such as mobile payments, smart home and security, and vehicle access are emerging.”
Image courtesy of flickr user Chris F.
