The North American wearables market still belongs to Apple

Apple Watch in reboot mode (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

Apple dominated the North American wearables market during the second quarter of 2020.
Apple accounted for almost 38% of total wearable shipments.
Apple Watch Series 5 was the best-selling smartwatch.

Apple continued to boss the North American wearables market during the second quarter of 2020 according to new numbers shared by Canalys.

Apple accounted for 37.6% of all shipped wearables during the quarter, with Fitbit coming in second with 19.3%. Fitbit's strength was thought to be in the low-cost fitness tracking market, one that saw significant action during the quarter.

Apple reportedly shipped 3.2 million wearables during the second quarter with part of that number made up by the best-selling smartwatch – Apple Watch Series 5. On the lower end, Apple Watch Series 3 sales were also strong, growing around 30%.

Canalys Wearables Shipments Q2 2020 (Image credit: Canalys)

The value of North America's wearable band market in Q2 2020 remained flat year-on-year at US$2 billion, despite shipments growing 10% annually. The average selling price declined 11% to US$235 due to a boom in low-end activity trackers and 30% year-on-year growth for Apple Watch Series 3. Apple Watch Series 5 was North America's best-selling smartwatch, matching last year's Series 4 shipments.

This all despite the third consecutive quarter of smartwatch sales decline in North America. While other vendors are struggling – Samsung saw a 48% reduction in shipments, for example – Apple was able to grow its shipments by around 9%.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.