The Apple Watch Series 7 and SE were the world's best-selling smartwatches in Q1

Apple already has the world’s best selling smartphone, tablet, wireless earbuds, and smart speaker for Q1 2022. Now, new data shows that the company also ranks first in the lucrative smartwatch market.

The Apple Watch Series 7 is the best-selling smartwatch in the world

analyst Francisco Jeronimo shared a small infographic on the world’s most popular smartwatches in the first quarter of the year, and to no one’s surprise, Apple absolutely dominated the rankings. The Apple Watch Series 7, the brand’s most expensive smartwatch with a starting price of $399 in the United States, became the world’s best-selling smartwatch between January and March 2022.

Early rumors pointed to a complete redesign with flat bezels, but the final design of the Apple Watch Series 7 marked a modest change from the Series 6, combining the same overall look with a larger screen and thinner bezels.

However, as the best-selling smartwatch list points out, that lack of change doesn’t seem to have hindered demand. In fact, Apple’s position in the smartwatch market remains extremely solid.

The Apple Watch SE continues to perform well despite its age

The second most popular smartwatch in the world in the first quarter was… Drum roll, please… Another Apple Watch! The Apple Watch SE is fast approaching its second birthday, but its $279 price tag has kept customers interested. The model offers the beautiful design of the Apple Watch Series 4-6, but without some of the premium features like ECG support. For most customers, it is more than enough, hence its popularity.

Sales should hold steady in the coming months as there have been few rival launches lately, but sales of the current generation Watch SE are expected to end in September when Apple is launching a second-generation version. Details on what that device will contain are scarce, although it will most likely offer the same design as the current model, backed by a faster chipset and a few extra features here and there.

The Series 3 is also a bestseller, but Apple is dropping support

While the Apple Watch Series 7 and Watch SE contributed the bulk of Apple’s smartwatch sales, the cheaper (and much older) Series 3 ultimately helped boost the brand’s market share to a excellent 51.2%.

The Apple Watch Series 3 costs $199 and originally launched in 2017. The fact that it’s nearly five years old means it’s rarely recommended these days, but it was still popular enough to become the fifth best-selling smartwatch worldwide.

However, the Series 3 is nearing the end of its life. Despite still being on sale, Apple won’t support it any more than watchOS 8. It will be the watchOS 9 features announced this week and will almost certainly be discontinued in September.

The Apple Watch Series 7 and SE were the world's best-selling smartwatches in Q1

Samsung was the only other brand to place smartwatches in the top 5

What about those other two spots in the top 5 smartwatch list? Well, those belong to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic – the company’s first watches with Google’s enhanced Wear OS platform. These two smartwatches were popular enough to secure a combined 18.9% market share for Samsung, representing strong growth in the first quarter of 2020, when the brand was still releasing Tizen-powered smartwatches. The latest market data shows that Samsung has made the right decision to replace Tizen. with Wear OS. And now the company is working on the next generation Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro, this momentum should continue into the second half of 2022 and beyond.

Behind Samsung in total sales with Garmin, with 7.2% market share, and Huawei, with 4.5% share. Fitbit, owned by Google, ranks fifth overall with a 3.6% share, though it’ll be interesting to see how this evolves once the Pixel Watch hits shelves this fall.