720,000 Android Wear smartwatches shipped last year — which is disappointing

Last year Google announced Android Wear, its mobile operating system for wearable gadgets. Since the announcement, many OEMs including Samsung, LG, Motorola, and Asus have launched their smartwatches running on the Google’s software, but how many did they ship last year? While OEMs and Google are yet to reveal a number, analysts over at Canalys say that more than 720,000 Wear watches shipped in 2014.

The report further reveals that Motorola’s Moto 360 — despite being available in limited quantity — was the top seller Wear watch last year. LG G Watch, which the company announced late last year did better than its first generation Wear watch.

Is this a good number? When compared to smartphone’s sales figure, definitely not. More than 1 billion Android handsets were shipped last year. Apple sold more than 70 million iPhones just last quarter. But wearable is a separate category, and the low number only indicates that the market is still very new and will take time to mature.

The number also returns disappointing results when compared to Pebble smartwatch, one of the biggest names in the smartwatch space. The company recently announced that they sold 600,000 Pebble units between March and December.

As for the “smart wearable band” category, about 4.5 million of such gadgets were shipped last year, reports Canalys. This category includes bands such as Fitibit, and Xiaomi’s Mi Band.

It will be interesting to see whether Apple’s forthcoming Apple Watch manages to change the dynamics of the existing smartwatch market. The Cupertino-based company will start shipping its Watch in April.

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