One in six smartwatches sold in 2014 were Android

The big smartwatch race has barely started, but the competition is already fierce with some of the smaller players stealing the limelight.

Of the 4.6 million devices sold overall last year, only 720,000 were Android smartwatches (around one in six) reports Venture Beat.

Fitbit is stuck hard and fast at the top of the basic wearable band market having launched two new devices, one with a heart rate monitor and a fitness watch called the Surge.

The results are surprising as Android is used by the most companies in the market. Motorola’s 360 reigned supreme in the Android space until Q4 2014 when it ran into supply chain issues.

LG’s G Watch R proved quite popular, whereas Samsung struggled to retain popularity, and Asus and Sony entered into the Android Wear space rather late.

Pebble, who along with Fitbit, used its own OS, shipped one million units from 2013 to 2014, and Xiaomi sent out over a million of its $13 Mi Bands.

Jason Low, analyst from Canalys, said: “Though the Mi Band in a lower-margin product than competing devices, Xiaomi entered the wearables market with a unique strategy, and its shipment volumes show how quickly a company can become a major force in a segment based solely on the size of the Chinese market.”