About 930,000 people, or 4 percent of Taiwan’s population, owned wearable devices last year — mainly to collect and track useful health information — an Institute for Information Industry (資策會) survey showed.
Citing the survey’s results, the government-sponsored Institute for Information Industry’s research arm Foreseeing Innovative New Digiservices (FIND) said that compared with 2014, last year there were double the number of wearable owners and the penetration rate was 2.3 percentage points higher.
FIND said that new entrants to the workforce between 25 and 29 were the main users of wearable devices last year.
Among all wearable devices, smart wristbands were the most popular, owned by 68.3 percent of wearable device owners, followed by smart watches at 40.4 percent.
The ownership rates for other wearable devices such as smart eyeglasses and smart shoes were all below 5 percent, according to the survey.
A device’s function is the primary motivating factor behind the decision to buy such products, with up to 58.5 percent of users saying they use wearables every day and 64.8 percent of users saying their smart devices help them exercise more efficiently.
Just more than half — 54.2 percent — use them to collect and track medical information, 47.9 percent use them to remind them of daily routines and 41.1 percent use them to connect to other equipment and devices, such as smartphones, the survey found.
There was a major boom in wearable devices in the electronics industry last year, FIND said, with the launches of the Apple Watch and the rollout of new smart devices from international brands Garmin Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Sony Corp, and domestic brands Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), Acer Inc (宏碁) and HTC Corp (宏達電) as well as hot sales of Xiaomi inc’s (小米 ) smart wristband.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
RSS