We reported some time ago that Best Buy consumers voted the Apple Watch as the one they wanted for Christmas. Well, it seems as though that survey isn’t as far-sighted as once believed. Official stats are in for Best Buy’s Q4 2015 sales, and the greatest sales share didn’t go to the fruit company, but its Seoul rival, Samsung Electronics.
The stats, gathered by JeeQ, show that Samsung achieved a 39.01% sales share at Best Buy, with fitness band (and now smartwatch maker) Fitbit in second place with a 17.01% sales share. Garmin had a 10% respectable sales share, with Microsoft (8.68%), Motorola (8.24%), Asus (7.91%), and Pebble (7.80%) in a close contest for fourth place. LG and Huawei were at the very bottom of Best Buy sales, with less than 1% popularity for both (0.22% and 0.11%, respectively).
At Amazon, it seems as though the Apple Watch had a strong showing, with nearly 12% of all sales for Q4 2015, but it was Cupertino’s Seoul rival who took the top prize. Samsung had slightly over double the sales share at Amazon than Apple (Samsung’s 23.80% vs. Apple’s 11.85% sales share), giving Samsung the top sweep of both retail brands for the Christmas season. Martian and LG both came in with tiny numbers at Amazon, and VTech kid smartwatches gave the company a very small piece of the percentage pie at the online retailer (just 0.34%). Pebble had a 7.97% sales share at Amazon, similar to its buying power at Best Buy for Q4. Motorola came in a respectable fourth place at Amazon for Q4 with a 9.23% sales share.
There are a number of reasons why customers prefer the Gear S2 over all other smartwatches out there: for one, a number of consumers are largely Android smartphone owners, and Samsung has now opened up its Gear line to accommodate Android (instead of making the Gear S2 exclusive to its own Samsung smartphones only). Other factors include the rotating bezel on the Gear S2, which is a unique way to utilize an old feature of divers watches and revolutionize it for the smart wearable market, not to mention the Rotary UI that puts Android Wear on notice. The Gear S2 shows how the UI should work in line with the circular shape of a smartwatch to make it not only better aesthetically but also more functional.
Samsung was king of smartwatch sales, but what is even more stunning is the fact that the Korean giant did not just dominate because of the Gear S2 Original and Classic models; the company also sold a number of its Gear Fit fitness bands (slightly over 18 months old now) as well as the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smartwatches. Whether old or new, in-store or online, customers wanted Samsung in a large showing that should make the Korean giant proud.
