In the second quarter of this year, Little Genius ranked fourth among smartwatch brands worldwide, grabbing 7 per cent of the market – ahead of Samsung, but behind Huawei, Apple and Xiaomi, according to Counterpoint Research.<\/p>\n
In the children’s segment, however, Little Genius was unrivalled with more than 48 per cent of the global market share in the first half, up from over 27 per cent in 2021.<\/p>\n
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A Little Genius store in Shanghai. Photo: Wency Chen alt=A Little Genius store in Shanghai. Photo: Wency Chen><\/p>\n
“It first meets parents’ core demand for safety – offering real-time location, voice and video calls,” said Bai Shenghao, a senior analyst at Counterpoint. “It also gives children their own social functions, with interfaces that match their tastes.”<\/p>\n
Little Genius’ extensive offline sales channels across China made it even easier for families to access its products, he added.<\/p>\n
The company’s products are priced from under 400 yuan (US$56) to over 2,000 yuan.<\/p>\n
Little Genius’ latest flagship model, the Z11, retails for 2,399 yuan and comes with remarkably precise location functions – pinpointing not just the child’s GPS location, but also the floor of a building, the nearest pedestrian crossing, walking pace, surrounding temperature and local traffic conditions.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, the Z11 offers health and fitness tracking, water resistance, a rotating dial with dual cameras for front and rear photos, as well as transit card and mobile payment. The newer and pricier the model, the richer the features.<\/p>\n
“Once children enter primary school, they start to become more independent,” said a Shanghai mother surnamed You, who has two children, aged eight and 13. “The main reason to buy a smartwatch is to make it easier to stay in touch.”<\/p>\n
Little Genius stands out in its location technology.<\/p>\n
Filings show that the company holds numerous patents related to high-precision positioning. By combining hardware and algorithms – using cues such as barometric pressure changes, gait tracking and nearby Wi-fi signals – the watches can locate children with exceptional accuracy, according to the company.<\/p>\n
Little Genius has created an extensive social platform that is built around a walled messaging service that excludes users of other devices. Users can exchange contacts simply by tapping watches together or searching by account numbers.<\/p>\n
“Little Genius has managed to strike a rare balance” between the product preferences of parents and children, said Ivy Yang, founder of consultancy Wavelet Strategy and mother of two.<\/p>\n
“It reassures parents with safety and control, while offering children social connections and play,” she said. “For the brand, a closed ecosystem and rapid product iteration have become a ‘moat’.”<\/p>\n
The social features of Little Genius watches, which are rarely highlighted by the brand’s advertising, represent their major appeal for children. The devices’ young users interact in a virtual world, largely invisible to adults, connected by the social media hashtag “XTC Circle”.<\/p>\n
Within this circle, children earn points by adding friends, checking in daily, walking with the step counter turned on or taking part in a “shake-to-win” lottery. Points can elevate an account’s level, unlocking privileges such as higher daily limits on “likes” for friends’ profiles. They can also be traded as virtual “red packets”, functioning like currency among friends.<\/p>\n
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Little Genius smartwatches stand out in their location tracking features. Photo: Wency Chen alt=Little Genius smartwatches stand out in their location tracking features. Photo: Wency Chen><\/p>\n
For many children, account level, homepage status and the number of likes on posts have become coveted markers of social status. Some resort to mass-adding strangers, hunting for software bugs or paying for bot services to inflate their metrics.<\/p>\n
A secondary market has even emerged on online second-hand goods trading platform Xianyu, where high-level Little Genius accounts and popular profiles are bought and sold for thousands of yuan.<\/p>\n
“Kids are seeking validation and value alignments from peers, which were traditionally fulfilled by families,” said Wavelet’s Yang, who questioned whether these systems enhance real-world social skills.<\/p>\n
She also expressed concerns that feedback loops based on points might have side effects, potentially affecting children’s patience and attention spans in unintended ways.<\/p>\n
“A device designed for location tracking and communication has, in practice, morphed into a competitive game among classmates,” said a study published in the Chinese magazine Public Communication of Science and Technology in July.<\/p>\n
It argued that children were increasingly raised under the influence of technology – where every interaction became data, and every data point served as a tool of control.<\/p>\n
Little Genius has also come under fire for inadequate content filtering. In 2022, it was summoned by local consumer associations for showing pornographic and violent content on its devices.<\/p>\n
The company did not respond to a request for comment sent during a week-long holiday in China.<\/p>\n
Despite the controversy, sales barely faltered. Once Covid-19 restrictions lifted and children returned to school, the company’s market share climbed even higher.<\/p>\n
In the first half of 2025, sales of children’s smartwatches in China reached 8.12 million, with Little Genius accounting for about 35 per cent, according to a report by Runto Technology.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP)<\/a>, the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app<\/a> or visit the SCMP’s Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> pages. Copyright \u00a9 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n