Why Did India Fall Out of Love With Smartwatches?
3 Oct 2025 7:20 AM IST
Description: In 2019, Apple Watches outsold the entire Swiss watch industry by volume. But in India, the boom came after the pandemic, when fitness tracking became a craze among consumers. Brands like Noise, boAt and Fire-Boltt sold watches for just a couple of thousand rupees. By late 2022, India had even overtaken North America as the biggest smartwatch market.
Now the shine is fading. In the second quarter of this year, smartwatch shipments in India fell by 28.4% year on year — the sixth straight decline, according to market intelligence firm IDC.
Why are Indians falling out of love with smartwatches? Find out in the latest episode of The Signal Daily.
The Core produces The Signal Daily. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts. To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in
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TRANSCRIPT
Kudrat (Host): In one of the first James Bond movies, Live and Let Die from 1973, the main character wears a Rolex Submariner. It’s no ordinary Rolex, of course. This one has a magnet that can deflect bullets, as well as a tiny buzz saw hidden in the bezel–that’s basically the round ring around your watch’s face. In The Spy Who Loved Me from 1977, James Bond has a Seiko with a built-in printer that spits out mission instructions.
Now, these weren’t real gadgets but rather just props. Still, four decades later, we do have elevated watches. I’m talking here of smart watches, which are essentially tiny phones that you can wear on your wrist. Sales of smartwatches boomed in India after the pandemic, particularly in 2023, but in the past few quarters, they’ve been declining, consistently.
In the second quarter of this year, smartwatch sales fell by 28.4% year on year, according to a recent report by IDC or International Data Corporation, a market intelligence firm. Sell-ins here refers to the number of units of a product sent out by manufacturers to distribution channels retailers and wholesalers.
Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Daily. We don’t do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.
In today’s episode, we’ll learn about smartwatches. What was the initial craze about, and why don’t Indian consumers want them anymore?
Kudrat (Host): The COVID pandemic a few years ago changed the way so many of us lived. Urban Indians, middle class and above, became much more health-conscious and started taking supplements, for instance. We covered nutraceuticals at The Signal Daily recently, I’ll link the episode in the show notes below.
Post-pandemic was also when smartwatch sales boomed in India. Smartwatches had been around for sometime before: Apple launched its watch in India in November 2015, with entry prices ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 rupees. By 2019, estimates suggest globally, Apple Watch outsold the entire Swiss watch industry by volume.
Indian brands like Noise released budget smartwatches in the mid-2010s, but in India, the smartwatch boom did not take off until after 2020, when people began to prioritise fitness. Consumers wanted to track key metrics such as sleep, step count, and blood pressure. That’s also when boAt launched its Storm watch, which cost just 2000 rupees.
Kudrat (Host): The Signal Daily visited a local branch of a large electronics store chain, where I spoke to an attendant. He didn’t allow me to record what he said – but he agreed, in 2021, 2022 and 2023, there was a craze among consumers for smartwatches. And, everything sells when it’s new.
So big was the craze that in late 2022, India even surpassed North America by becoming the largest market for smartwatches in the world, according to a report by market research firm, Counterpoint. Specifically, Counterpoint found that in Q3 2022, festive sales helped smartwatch sales grow in India by 171% year on year.
To give you a better picture, according to IDC’s data, back in 2020, smartwatch shipments were at 2.6 million units. That figure jumped nearly fivefold in 2021 to 12.2 million, before exploding in 2022 to 30.7 million. Growth stayed strong through 2023, when shipments hit 53.4 million, a 74% increase year-on-year.
But the surge didn’t last. In 2024, shipments slumped to 35 million, a steep 34% drop. The slide has carried into 2025 too. As I mentioned earlier, IDC reported 6.6 million units in Q2-2025, down 28% from the year before, while Counterpoint said Q1 volumes fell 33%.
Kudrat (Host): The attendant I spoke to said that the problem with smartwatches is that once you buy one, you don’t really need to buy another. You can just keep the same one with you until it stops working.
Now, that is true for other products too, like phones and laptops. But, prominent companies regularly bring upgrades and new features – for instance, Apple recently launched multiple models of the iPhone 17. But, brands haven’t done the same with smartwatches. Analysts, like Vikas Sharma of IDC who The Signal Daily spoke to, say the lack of innovation in smartwatches is one reason why people don’t want to buy more of them.
Kudrat (Host): There are other problems that consumers have with smartwatches as well. Online, consumers spoke of needing to charge their smart watches regularly, which they found annoying. Some others talked of how analog watches felt more classic, and so, they looked better with the rest of their outfit.
Laraib, a software developer I spoke to, said that he has five analog watches.
Kudrat (from clip): So, um, what do you think about smartwatches, Laraib?
Laraib: I think, okay, there exists a bias. So when we talk about, uh, high net worth people, we see them most of the time wearing traditional analog watches. So that is something classic, not a trend. So people want to assimilate with those people.
Therefore, smart watches. People have to defer. Oh, I, I'd rather go with analogue watches.
Kudrat (Host): Laraib said he believes that there’s also privacy issues with smartwatches. He doesn’t want the guy sitting next to him to see every text or notification he gets.
Laraib (from clip): Apart from that, what I feel, uh, privacy would be breach. Some message pop, pop up. Let's say I'm planning and plotting about someone and he gets to see, so it all fails.
Uh, apart from that. Um, financial finance. Oh, yeah, let's say I, I made some payment also, uh, and I, I get to see, oh, what's the amount left now?
Uh, and I, let's say I lied. Somebody want to borrow some money, I said, I don't have. Now they get to see, oh, I have money, so, so this one.
Kudrat (Host): Umaid is another consumer. He said he used to use a cheap smartwatch a few years ago.
Umaid: Alright, so basically I just use it for my steps. I used to call my steps, so I just use it for that. And aside from that, I don't find any huge needs and just the issue was, uh, if I used to get any notifications or calls so people would notice and people would say, because it would vibrate and make a sound.
So, which makes it very obvious, even if I'm sitting in a classroom and I get a call, it would disrupt the whole class as well. So. I didn't personally like it because, um, of the privacy breach indeed. So if something that I wanna hide from someone and like I get a call, they'll get to know I'm still in touch with them, which I didn't want them to know, for example.
Kudrat (Host): Though Umaid has stopped using his smartwatch for his step-counting, that’s still the main utility of these products now, according to Vikas of IDC and the attendants I spoke to.
Under fitness markers, there’s of course, your basic step counter, which most smartwatches have. But, some fancier smartwatches even track your heart rate, aerobic fitness, sleep quantity and quality, calories burned and even your ECG levels. The more expensive the watch, the more features you get.
Kudrat (Host): But, consumers should be careful. Cheaper smartwatches don’t always give you accurate fitness data. The more expensive ones can be wrong too.
The Signal Daily spoke to Minal, whose husband recently suffered a heart attack. He had just boarded a flight from Delhi to Bangalore when he started feeling classic symptoms of a cardiac arrest – uneasiness in his chest, shallow breaths. The airline crew asked if he wanted to deboard.
Minal: And, in those five minutes, he also looked through both his gadgets, uh, an Apple watch and a Huble. And what he tells me is there wasn't anything major on it. You know, even there wasn't any, um, any indication that there's anything wrong with his pulse and hence he decided to carry on assuming that it'll be a minor, you know, maybe it's an acidity, and he just trudged on.
And, um, those five minutes and obviously the three hours that he spent on the flight, and then the hour and a half on the ground. Which we took to finally get him the care that was needed to get him onto the emergency. And, um, post that he needed two surgeries to get over it. So it just happened, uh, last week.
Um, what he went through was a massive, massive heart attack. Um, so, um, I don't think he, he, um, assumed that he was having one and basis his experience with these gadgets in the past.
Kudrat (Host): Minal’s husband is quite fit, and despite the two surgeries and the severity of his heart attack, he survived. But, Minal says she wants consumers to be aware that these devices aren’t foolproof.
Minal: you know, on a regular, maybe, you know, when it's not an emergency situation, maybe it might be of help. Since I've never used them, I don't know. But when it is really an emergency, this is my experience. It doesn't help to get biased by what is getting shown on the watch. And it just, I think, um, scares me and makes me really, really angry that those five minutes, that was so very critical and the fact that those five minutes could have had, because this was easily, um.
This was fatal. A hundred percent. Like we just, just barely managed to scrape through, you know? So, um, I just want people to be aware of that.
Kudrat (Host): Many consumers buy wearables like smartwatches primarily to track fitness – recent reports back up this claim too. But, while these devices are more or less accurate in counting steps and even heart rate, to some extent, they’re far less reliable when it comes to ECGs, blood oxygen saturation, and even calories burned. Meaning, we shouldn’t use these watches as diagnostic tools. Though companies like Apple have put out clear disclaimers about this, it bears repeating since a lot of us miss the fine print.
Kudrat (Host): So, why did the smartwatch story cool? The first wave solved curiosity: count my steps, buzz my wrist, feel fitter. But once the novelty faded, the trade-offs — daily charging, so-so accuracy on the fancy metrics, and a look that doesn’t always fit your style — started to matter more than the benefits. For most of us, these are useful companions, not medical devices or must-upgrade gadgets. If brands want a second boom, they’ll need week-long batteries, health features that are clinically validated, and designs you’d wear to a wedding, not just a workout. Until then, many consumers are doing something very rational: keeping the watch they have, or going back to analogue.
Kudrat (Host): That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Daily. We don't do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends. The Core produces The Signal Daily. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.
To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.
If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at [email protected] or you can write to me personally at [email protected].
Thank you for listening.
