According to a new Counterpoint Research report, global shipments of Edge AI-capable smartwatches grew 70% year over year in Q1 2026, with Apple accounting for roughly 90% of the total. Here are the details.
Apple comfortably leads the Edge AI smartwatch market
Edge AI generally refers to processing AI tasks locally on a device, rather than sending data to the cloud for processing.
As AI models become smaller and more efficient, and hardware is increasingly optimized to run them, companies have been bringing more AI-powered features directly to their devices.
For the Apple Watch, this means using its built-in Neural Engine to process features such as gestures, Siri requests, and some health and safety signals directly on the watch (or, in some cases, the iPhone), rather than sending all the underlying data to the cloud for processing.
