India’s boAt becomes fifth biggest wearable brand in the world

New Delhi: Delhi-based brand boAt Lifestyle, which sells products such as earphones, headphones and smart watches, has reached the top five in the global wearables market, becoming the first Indian company to do so.

boAt grabbed 2.6% of the global wearable shipment in September quarter to share the fifth position with Google's owned Fitbit, according to International Data Corporation’s (IDC) latest market report. Xiaomi, Huawei and Samsung were the other leading brands in the global top five.

IDC attributes boAt's success to their strong marketing campaign and partnerships with local cricket teams. The company had signed several India cricketers including KL Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan as their brand ambassador.

“Indian vendors were among the first to realise the opportunity in wireless earwear category and launched products at right price points,” said Jaipal Singh, associate research manager, client devices, IDC India.

However, IDC noted that boAt's presence is largely limited to the Indian market and the company lacks the global presence and supply chain of big companies such as Apple, Samsung and Huawei.

In India, boAt led the entire earwear category with a 32.4% market share and TWS (truly Wireless Stereo) with 26.1% market share, as per IDC.

“Right now there is a huge demand for wearbales due to pandemic. Also many are migrating from wired to wireless earwears. For the next two years there will be a market for all brands to grow. As the market matures, companies with more R&D and marketing muscle will dominate,” said Singh.

Demand for wearables, particularly TWS has grown considerably since the covid-19 outbreak as more people are buying them for remote working, learning and entertainment.

Riding on this demand, global wearables market grew 35.1% year over year (YoY) in the September quarter with total shipments reaching 125 million units.

India with 11.8 million unit shipments was one of the fastest growing wearable markets with an impressive 165.1% YoY growth.

Apple with 33% market share remained the leading wearables brand globally, on back of strong demand for AirPods and Apple Watches. Apple also expanded its Watch lineup ensuring that devices were available at multiple price points.