San Francisco, Mar 2 (IANS): With eight million shipments in the fourth quarter, Apple has become leader in the global wearables market, a report by International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker has said.

In the fourth quarter, Apple shipped eight million wearables with a 21 per cent market share and 57.5 per cent year-over-year growth, the report said on Thursday.

According to the report, the fourth quarter of 2017 was the first quarter that Apple held the market leader position all to itself after spending several quarters close behind Fitbit or Xiaomi.

Apple is catching the market at the right time with many users of basic wearables moving on to smartwatches and cellular connectivity (available on select Series 3 Watches) is earning a warm reception among end users, the report said.

The late-year push of eight million units separated Apple from the competition to emerge as the overall leader of the wearables market for the year, the report added.

"User tastes have become more sophisticated over the past several quarters and Apple pounced on the demand for cellular connectivity and streaming multimedia," Ramon T. Llamas, Research Director for IDC's Wearables team, said in a statement.

The top five wearables companies for the fourth quarter of 2017 are Apple followed by Fitbit, Xiaomi, Garmin and Huawei.