It has not gone beyond 50,000 units yet, the leading companies in the industry say.
Wearables remain a niche and they are not witnessing the same spectacular growth as smartphones and tablets, whose sales reached 2.5 million and 800,000 units in Romania in four or five years.
“The wearables market is still in its early stages, which means there is growth potential especially since supply is diversifying and becoming more sophisticated,” said Cristian Cojocaru, head of the telecom division of Samsung Romania.
“Smartwatches will become more and more popular and this year we expect the market to increase by 40% compared with last year. Sales of smartwatches and smartbands stood at tens of thousands of units last year, beating our initial estimates.”
Samsung launched its first smartwatch, Samsung Galaxy Gear, in 2013 and is now selling five models and has a 40% market share in Romania.
“The trend on the wearables market is to have smartwatches incorporate the features of the fitness trackers (bands). Whereas the focus used to be on fitness trackers, with the advent of new smartwatch models, interest in the latter has risen,” says Alexandra Faciu, senior product manager with Orange Romania, the first telecom operator in Romania to start selling such accessories.
“Customers want devices to combine more features into a single product from health and exercise monitoring to music listening, calls and e-mail reading. The percentage of such products on the market is currently balancing out.”
Cristian Carjan, business unit manager of the mobile division of eMag, the leading local online retailer, believes smartwatches account for the largest share of the wearable accessories market.
“Watches account for 65% to 70% of the demand for wearables, while fitness bands account for 30% to 35%. The share of smartwatches is greater because they include the features of the bands.”
The best-selling smartwatches in Romania include Samsung Gear S and Gear Fit, Motorola 360 and MyKronoz ZeWatch2, while the most popular smartbands are Fitbit Flex and Jawbone UP2, according to eMag and Orange.
One in two smartphone users will have a wearable accessory in the next two years.
“We’ve received four times more orders in 2015 than in last year and expect the wearables market will soar. We estimate a wearables market of 35,000 units by yearend, 25,000 of which smartwatches and 10,000 fitness trackers,” Carjan said.
The price of such products varies from EUR50 to EUR400, and may be as high as EUR17,770 for some Apple Watches.
How much is the local market worth? There is no official data, and most of those ZF asked about it did not provide details about the average price or the total value of the segment. If the average price were EUR200, the market should be worth EUR7 million, considering the estimated 35,000 wearable accessories sales in 2015.
The only estimate came from Tudor Tiboc, founder and chief executive officer of Quickmobile, a distributor and retailer of mobile devices. He says the local wearable accessory market might reach EUR20 million this year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)