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.
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