Smartwatches now sync better with a variety of smartphone features

Some time ago, foreign market research firm Strategy Analytics released its 2018 smartwatch report, showing that Samsung and Fitbit's smartwatch shipments in the last quarter of 2018 quadrupled compared with the same period last year. On the other hand, Apple's smartwatch market share fell by more than 15% during the same period, but Apple's smartwatch market share is still above 50%, ranking first.

With the strong growth of smart watches, the shipment volume of smart watch displays has also increased.

Recently, the latest data from IHS Markit, an analysis and solution provider, showed that as smartwatches and smartphones become more synchronized, shipments of smartwatch displays increased by 42% year-on-year to 149 million units in 2018.

Since the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Gear and Apple Watch in 2013 and 2014 respectively, shipments of smartwatch displays have grown significantly from 9.4 million units in 2014, increasing more than 15 times in the past four years.

The growing demand for smartwatches has driven the need for underlying display technologies to make them. In 2018, RitDisplay led the smartwatch display market with a 22% market share. The company shipped 32.5 million monochrome active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (PMOLED) panels, which were mainly used in low-cost smart wristband watches from Xiaomi and other Chinese brands.

Following closely behind is BOE, with a market share of 12%, which shipped 17.9 million active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) and thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) panels to Huawei and other Chinese brands' mid-range and high-end smartwatches. In third place is LG Display, with a market share of 11%, which shipped 16.1 million flexible AMOLED panels to Apple Watch.

“Smartwatch display shipments accounted for only one-tenth of total smartphone display shipments in 2018,” Hayase said. “This suggests that smartwatch display shipments still have room to grow in the coming years, especially as smartwatches can now better sync with multiple smartphone functions.”