Chinese companies in late push into wearables
16-Oct-14, Caixin Online
Wearable technology, previously associated mostly with surgeons in operating rooms, is now creeping into more aspects of daily life.
The earliest examples of these gadgets were medical devices like pacemakers and heart stents, but now watches and wristbands than can collect information from the wearer and can connect to the Internet are becoming more common.
Tech giants like Google, Apple Inc. and Samsung Group began making inroads into wearable technology years ago. Now, Chinese players like Xiaomi Inc., ZTE Corp., Baidu Inc. and Huawei Technologies Co. have more recently joined the fray.
Xiaomi makes the Mi Band, a wearable fitness device to track exercise and sleeping patterns, and ZTE produces the GrandWatch, a fitness tracking watch.
Some 40 million wearable devices will be sold in China in 2015 and the market will be worth 11.49 billion yuan, up from 610 million yuan in 2012.