I'll be the one to say it: Wear OS is officially good now. The combination of Wear OS 5 software and Pixel Watch or Galaxy Watch hardware has made the best Wear OS smartwatches real Apple Watch competitors. In fact, I briefly ditched my Apple Watch Ultra for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic before settling on the Garmin Enduro 3 as my daily driver.
But there's no denying Wear OS still has work to do. The platform is still emerging, and the Apple Watch is still a more attractive product for software and hardware development teams to build for. For example, according to April 2024 data from Counterpoint Research, Wear OS is expected to hold 27% of the smartwatch market share outside of China. That's a significant uptick from last year, although it's still nothing compared to Apple's 49% projected market share.
