After years of waiting, Google finally launched the Pixel Watch at the end of last year along with its latest generation of smartphones and, thanks to a new number, it seems that the smartwatch is a bit of a success for the company with hundreds of thousands of units shipped in his first few. months
Canalys reports that Google shipped 880,000 Pixel Watch units in Q4 2022, the first three months that the smartwatch was available for sale. It was enough to help Google maintain second place in the smart watch market with 8% of the total shipment volume. That’s behind Apple’s commanding lead of nearly 28%, and well above Samsung’s 5.9%.
Of course, the vast majority of Google’s wearable shipments aren’t actually the Pixel Watch. Rather, it includes Fitbit devices, which make up the bulk of the four million units shipped in Q4 2022.
By comparison, Apple shipped just 14 million smartwatches in the same time period, while Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei hovered around three million. Portable shipments have declined overall over the past year, with the market declining 18% year-on-year. Google saw a 25% drop, which was actually better than the 35% drop Samsung saw. Apple, unsurprisingly, held down with a 17% drop. Canalys also notes that the Pixel Watch has succeeded in strengthening Google smart watch growth by 16%.
There is one bit of evidence against this claim, as Google’s Pixel Watch app, which is required to use the watch, just recently surpassed 500,000 installs. But with the difference in shipments versus actual units sold, it still seems well within the realm of possibility.
This comes as Google continues to de-emphasize Fitbit’s smartwatches, the Versa and Sense. The launch of those fitness-focused wearables last year saw many smartwatch features removed such as third-party apps, and that’s something Google just doubled down on.
Related: Fitbit Sense 2 & Versa 4 review: In the shadow of the Pixel Watch
Recently, Google also announced the discontinuation of some long-available Fitbit features while the fitness app also saw several major outages throughout February. Meanwhile, Google continued to build the Pixel Watch, adding support for Fall Detection among other improvements.
Of course, Google still has a long way to go with the Pixel Watch to catch up with its main competitors. Samsung and Apple both sell far more smartwatches than Google and Fitbit combined, but for a first-generation product that had high expectations, the Pixel Watch seems to be doing pretty well.
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