Apple accounted for nearly 90% of all Edge AI-capable smartwatch shipments during the first quarter of 2026, giving the company a commanding lead in the growing wearable AI market.
Counterpoint Research reported that Edge AI adoption across the wider smartwatch industry rose 70% year over year and reached 25% of total shipments during the quarter.
Edge AI allows a smartwatch to process artificial intelligence tasks directly on its own chip instead of sending information to a smartphone or cloud server. Apple Watch models use this technology for features such as fall detection, irregular heartbeat alerts, health tracking, and faster on-device responses.
Apple’s Chip Strategy Gives It a Major Lead
Apple started building its advantage in 2023 when it introduced the S9 chip with a four-core Neural Engine designed for on-device machine learning. Huawei followed with its Kirin W80 chip in 2025, while Qualcomm plans to enter the market with its Snapdragon Wear Elite platform.
Health and fitness remain the main uses for Edge AI smartwatches. Shipments of watches with blood pressure monitoring doubled year over year, while sleep apnea detection shipments tripled during the same period.
Counterpoint Research only counts a smartwatch as Edge AI-capable when it includes a neural engine or NPU and uses that hardware to process at least one health, safety, or interaction feature directly on the device.
