India's budget smartwatch bubble bursts: Sales plummet, innovation lags

NEW DELHI: India’s gadget buyers are shunning inexpensive smartwatches, a category that saw a massive surge in demand until two years ago. A lack of customer enthusiasm for barebone alternatives to the benchmark Apple Watch as well as existing buyers finding them unworthy of a second-time purchase, have caused smartwatch sales in the country to drop to its lowest in sales volumes and revenue in four calendar years.Data sourced by Mint from market researcher International Data Corporation (IDC) India showed that 28.9 million smartwatches were sold in 2025, generating net revenue of $780 million.

This marks a stark 43.9% decline in revenue from $1.39 billion in 2023, a record year with 53.4 million units sold.Last year was the weakest for smartwatch sales, lower than 30.7 million units sold in 2022 and 35.1 million sold in 2024. The drop in demand is because of the absence of any innovation in budget smartwatches and the absence of returning buyers after over 150 million devices were sold in the past five years.Companies taking the hardest hit include public markets-bound Boat, publicly listed The Titan Company, Gurugram-based Noise and Mumbai-based Fire-Boltt.

As per IDC, Titan sold 2.6 million smartwatches in 2025, down 21%. Titan has acknowledged this impact.“Smartwatches declined 27% YoY due to significant contraction in volumes, though pricing was largely steady YoY,” Titan said in its December quarter investor presentation.

Suparna Mitra, chief executive officer of Titan’s smartwatch division, acknowledged the impact as well during its June quarter analyst call on 7 August.“Smartwatches have gone through a big correction. I think a lot of it happened last year in calendar year ‘24.