Apple's failure to grow sales of its Apple Watch have depressed the smartwatch market, which has significantly shrunk, according to analyst figures that show a year-on-year decline of 32 percent.

The Apple Watch holds sway over nearly half of the smartwatch market. However, sales of the Apple Watch tumbled 55 percent in the second quarter of 2016 compared with the same period a year earlier.

Analyst house IDC, which has published preliminary numbers, said that 3.5 million smartwatches were sold between April and June this year. During the same three-month period in 2015, 5.1 million units were shifted.

In the second quarter, 1.6 million Apple Watch gizmos were sold, leaving the product comfortably still the market leader, but its trouble is plain to see: Apple was the only top smartwatch manufacturer to see its sales drop.

Behind it, Samsung, Lenovo, LG, and Garmin have all seen their sales grow by at least a quarter. Between them, the vendors have just over a third of the market, at 37 percent.

It's not all doom and gloom for Apple, however. It hasn't released a new Watch since the first generation hit the shelves in April 2015, and analysts are expecting an uptick in sales when Apple Watch 2 is released, possibly in September. IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani said:

Consumers have held off on smartwatch purchases since early 2016 in anticipation of a hardware refresh, and improvements in WatchOS are not expected until later this year, effectively stalling existing Apple Watch sales. Apple still maintains a significant lead in the market and unfortunately a decline for Apple leads to a decline in the entire market. Every vendor faces similar challenges related to fashion and functionality, and though we expect improvements next year, growth in the remainder of 2016 will likely be muted.

The analyst house also predicts another significant shake-up in the smartwatch scene, suggesting that "traditional watchmaker brands" might begin to take it more seriously.

"To date, only a small handful of traditional watchmaker brands have entered the smartwatch market, trailing far behind their technology brand counterparts," said IDC's wearables research boss Ramon T. Llamas.

"This seems to be changing, albeit slowly, as key vendors like Casio, Fossil, and Tag Heuer have launched their own models to the market."

He added: "Still, participation from traditional watchmaker brands is imperative to deliver some of the most important qualities of a smartwatch sought after by end-users, namely design, fit, and functionality. Combine these with the brand recognition and distribution these brands already have, and it's reasonable to expect the smartwatch market to grow from here."