Apple Watch Shipments Fall for 2nd Consecutive Year Due to Lack of New Model, Minimal Upgrades: Report

Apple is said to have seen a significant decline in the demand for its smartwatches in most regions. As per a market research firm, 2024 was the second consecutive year where Apple Watch shipments declined by a striking margin. One of the most notable areas where shipments fell is North America, the Cupertino-based tech giant's home turf. This is attributed to the lack of new models, as well as minimal upgrades made to the existing lineup in the last year.

Decline in Apple Watch Shipments

According to Counterpoint Research's Global Smartwatch Shipment Tracker for the fourth quarter (Q4) 2024, Apple Watch shipments declined by 19 percent year-on-year (YoY). It marked the second consecutive year and fifth consecutive quarter of decline for the iPhone maker, whilst its competitors, especially Chinese OEMs, performed strongly in the global smartwatch market.

Photo Credit: Counterpoint Research

A significant portion of the decline is due to the company losing ground in North America, which is said to contribute to more than half of its total shipments in a year. Apple's market share reduced by 8 percentage points YoY in 2024, as per the analysis firm.

The overall decline is attributed to several factors, with one of them being minimal upgrades made to the Apple Watch Series 10 which debuted last year. Further, the company did not launch the Apple Watch SE (3rd Generation) and Apple Watch Ultra 3 models. As per the report, the former is an affordable option which constitutes most of its shipments in the post-launch period. Meanwhile, the latter is Apple's most premium smartwatch offering which holds over 10 percent of its total smartwatch shipment share.

Apple has also been dodging legal hurdles in the last two years, largely due to a patent dispute between Apple and Masimo, a medical technology company that claimed that Apple Watch's blood oxygen sensor technology infringed several of their patents. This forced the company into initially halting its smartwatch sales in the US, following which it disabled the pulse oximetry feature for measuring blood oxygen (SpO2).

Notably, these factors contributed to the Cupertino-based tech giant witnessing a YoY shipment decline for the first time in a quarter when it also launched a new smartwatch series.