 "Lower penetration, affordability to make India top wearables market in 2023")
India is likely to become the world's largest market for wearables by the end of 2023, The Economic Times (ET) reported citing data from market research firm IDC India. The news comes at a time when markets like North America and China are going through a tough phase and are showing signs of saturation.
India is expected to account for 130-135 million units of the total 504.1 million wearables, which is around 26 per cent of the total units shipped around the world. India shipped 100 million units of wearables last year out of a total of 492 million around the world which was only second to China and North America.
Taking the January-March quarter into consideration, India accounted for 26 per cent of the global sales according to IDC India. Counterpoint Research put India's share at 27 per cent, the ET report said.
A similar trend was evident from the data of both the research firms and both attributed the high sales figures to the lower penetration or the number of smartphone users owning a wearable.
Citing Counterpoint, ET reported that for every smartphone sold, one smartwatch is also sold in India. Both IDC and Counterpoint expect India to maintain its growth momentum in the segment through 2023.
Research Manager at IDC, Jitesh Ubrani was quoted in the report as saying, "India has already surpassed the United States and China in terms of market size and will remain the largest market going forward thanks to the breadth of low-cost yet feature-rich devices from local vendors."
Talking about the differences in the markets of North America, China and India in terms of maturity, IDC researcher Upasana told ET that while the Indian market has big numbers to its credit, wearables sold in North America and China are relatively costlier and come with high-level operating systems such as Apple's WatchOS and Google's Wear OS.