Global shipments of wearable devices declined 18.9% on year in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 138.7 million units, according to new data from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker. Shipments for the full year 2022 were down 7.7% compared to 2021, marking the first year of decline for the category due to challenging macroeconomic conditions and difficult comparisons to the strong results of 2021. Despite the downturn, overall shipments of 492.1 million units in 2022 were well above 2020 and 2019 levels.