San Francisco, Mar 6 (IANS): Apple continued to rule the global wearables market with 10.4 million Apple Watches among 16.2 million devices shipped in the Q4 2018, the International Data Corporation (IDC) said on Wednesday.

The worldwide market for wearable devices grew 31.4 per cent during the fourth quarter, reaching a new high of 59.3 million units, according to the IDC data released in "Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker".

While Apple garnered 27.4 per cent market share, Xiaomi came a distant second with 12.6 per cent.

Xiaomi's Mi Band 3 alone accounted for over 30 per cents of all wrist bands shipped during the fourth quarter.

Shipments for the entire year of 2018 grew by 27.5 per cent with 172.2 million wearables shipped.

With 46.2 million units shipped, Apple led the entire year with 26.8 per cent share, followed by Xiaomi at 13.5 per cent share.

"Smartwatches, meanwhile, grew 54.3 per cent and accounted for 29.8 per cent of all wearable device shipments in 2018," said Ramon T. Llamas, Research Director for IDC's Wearables.

At third position, Huawei grew 43 per cent during the quarter in an otherwise declining market and this translated to a staggering 248.5 per cent growth in the wearables market since many of the Huawei and Honor phones were bundled with wearables.

Fitbit was fourth and Samsung at fifth ended the quarter with 4 million units shipped.

Wrist bands accounted for 30 per cent of the market as recent launches from Xiaomi, Huawei, and Fitbit continued to drive the category forward. Ear-worn devices grew 66.4 per cent and captured 21.9 per cent of the market.

"The market for ear-worn wearables has grown substantially this past year and we expect this to continue in the years to come," said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers.