Indian smartwatch market sees 173% growth in Q1 2022, report

India’s smartwatch market grew 173% year-on-year (YoY) in the quarter ending March 2022, according to a report by Counterpoint’s IoT service, published May 5. Homegrown brand Noise doubled its YoY shipments and was the market leader with a share of 23%, the report said.

Indian brands Fire-Boltt replaced boAt as the second leading smartwatch brand during the quarter, capturing  21% of the market.  boAt has slipped to the third position as its market share has dropped from 23.7% in Q1 2021 to 17.8% in Q1 2022. The top three Indian brands accounted for over 60% of the market. 

Dizo by Chinese phone brand Relame with 4.4% market share and Samsung with 3.8% were the other brands in the top five. In the premium segment (Rs 30,000 and above), Apple was the market leader with an 87% share.

The Rs 5,000 price segment accounted for 87% of the market, up from 78% a year ago, while the share of the Rs 1,000 to 2,000 segment has increased to 14% from 2%.  "Many brands have started to focus on this low price tier to attract first-time users and acquire the smart band user base," Anshika Jain, senior research analyst at Counterpoint said in a statement.

Counterpoint attributes the growth in demand for smartwatches to the increase in display sizes and the addition of in-demand features such as SpO2. Harshit Rastogi, research analyst at Counterpoint explains that brands are attracting smart band users as these bands have limited functionality due to smaller displays.

According to Rastogi, the contribution of the smartwatches with 1.5-inch display increased to more than 50% of the smartwatch market as compared to 11% last year.

Several wearable brands including boAt and Noise have started manufacturing smartwatches in India. Rastogi is expecting the share of domestically manufactured smartwatches to grow in the second half of 2022.