Strava 2025 Report: Apple Watch #1, COROS Surges, Gen Z Drives Gear Spending

The New Sports Tech Order: Apple, Garmin, and the Rise of Coros

Following our look at Garmin Connect data yesterday, the newly released Strava “Year in Sport” 2025 report offers a market-wide view of current trends. It analysed the data of over 180 million athletes, providing insights into how different brands perform. Plus, more light is shed on the spending habits and gear preferences of the emerging Gen Z demographic – an influential part of the market over the next few years.

The data paints a clear picture of the sports tech landscape: the Apple Watch (Series) is the most-used ‘device’ for recording activities, while COROS is the fastest-growing watch brand year over year. Despite these shifts, Garmin remains the largest overall brand.

The 2025 Gear Breakdown: What 180 Million Athletes Used

The 12th annual “Year in Sport” report analysed billions of activities from September 2024 to August 2025. This is a pretty extensive dataset. Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Wearables: Apple Leads, While the Strava App Remains ‘King’

The digital gear used to log workouts is fundamental to the Strava experience. Yet, despite the popularity of dedicated smartwatches, the single most common way athletes recorded their activities in 2025 was through the Strava mobile app, accounting for 72% of all recorded workouts. I was a little surprised by that – anecdotally, I do see the Strava app used a fair amount, but only by cyclists.

In the dedicated watch category, the Apple Watch was the number one device. It would be interesting to see how that breaks down to the individual Watch model. It does make some sense to lump Apple Watch together – but then why not Garmin FR255, FR265, FR270? Separating Watch from Watch Ultra is a must-do split for Strava’s data next year.

The report also noted an interesting gender difference – women were 70% more likely than men to use an Apple Watch to log their activities. That’s a big difference, which feels intuitively wrong, but I would imagine the sport/gender breakdown would help explain the headline number.

Garmin ranked second across all device types, effectively the second-most important brand.  Apple Health ranked third in overall usage. (?!?) Strava might want to look at that one. It’s wrong.

Beyond the established players, the report spotlighted significant emerging trends. COROS was named the fastest-growing watch brand year over year on the platform, thanks in no small part to its Pace Pro and NOMAD watches. But what caught my eye was the growth in non-watch wearables, such as Oura, which was said to have experienced “rapid growth”.

Cycling: American Brands Dominate

Two American bike brands have separated themselves from the seemingly growing number of new Asian brands. Trek and Specialized are dominant, with the top two spots in every major bike category:

• Road Cycling: The top three were Trek, Specialized, and Giant.
• Gravel Cycling: Specialized led the way, followed by Trek and then Scott.
• Mountain Biking: Specialized again took the top spot, with Trek and Giant close behind.

The Gen Z Gear Investment

The survey data confirms that spending on fitness gear is a high priority for younger users, even amid economic pressures. Wearables were cited as the most significant fitness investment in 2025 by 63% more Gen Z users than Gen X.

This financial commitment to fitness is set to continue, with 30% of Gen Z respondents planning to increase their fitness spending in 2026.