Global Market for Wearables to Reach US$20.6 Bn. in 2018: IEK

With ever more global large-sized enterprises, such as Nike and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., actively developing wearable electronic devices, the global market for such products is expected to reach US$20.6 billion in 2018, with sales of 191 million units, according to the Industrial Economics & Knowledge Center (IEK), a Taiwanese government-funded market research institute.

The IEK forecasts that US$3.77 billion of the wearables market will be generated by semiconductors produced for wearable devices, and US$9.63 million by related components, such as batteries, displays, camera modules and accessories. The considerable business potential, the institute added, will reap short-term benefits for Taiwan's electronics industry.

The IEK said that some Taiwanese electronics makers, mainly those of chipsets, batteries and display, have been trying to explore the emerging segment through cooperation with vendors.

The center added that suppliers of sensors, embedded flash memory, MEMS (micro electronic-mechanical system), Bluetooth and WiFi modules will also be able to ride the wearable electronics wave. The boom will particularly help revive Taiwan's persistently gloomy DRAM sector, given that domestic makers are actively working on low power DRAM. Wearable electronics are generally built with such memory modules,

The IEK also reported that the emergence of wearable electronics, along with mobile Internet devices, the Internet of things and cloud computing, has motivated Taiwanese semiconductor packagers to upgrade technology and production processes. The trend will play to boost Taiwan's long-term global competitiveness in the post-PC era.

The IEK concluded that wearable electronic devices have wide-ranging applications that can sustain development of the sector in Taiwan. It therefore advises large-sized players to focus on middle-to-high-end models targeted at the consumer segment, and smaller-sized ones to explore niche segments. (SC)