At the Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) 2014, many IT vendors showcased their latest wearable devices with white-box smart bracelets being a spotlight at the show, and competition among players was rather fierce.
GPS and Bluetooth sport smartwatches are growing popular among joggers in the US and Europe. GPS and camera smartwatches also see good demand in the children market. Digitimes Research expects more white-box players to join the two sectors in the first half of 2015.
Since the smart bracelet industry has a low entry barrier, many China-based white-box players have used standardized modules to tap the market. However, these wearable devices are seeing fierce price competition due to lack of differentiations, according to Digitimes Research's latest report on wearable devices.
With the jogging markets in the US and Europe having seen a significant increase in smartwatch demand, GPS device vendors have been aggressively developing sport smartwatches featuring GPS functions. White-box players have also launched Bluetooth sport smartwatches for monitoring body conditions.
Conventional watch vendors are still placing their focuses on developing hybrid watches with long battery life and so far have shown little interest in smartwatches that are able to connect with smartphones.
Smartphone-connectable smartwatches are mostly being developed by white-box and tablet vendors and most of the devices introduced in the third quarter adopted MediaTek's MT62XX solution. Several white-box players are set to adopt MediaTek's Linkit and Rockchip's solution for their smartwatches for 2015.
Meanwhile, white-box players have also started focusing on developing children smartwatches including models featuring camera modules for learning and playing purposes, as well as GPS models to prevent children from getting lost.
Digitimes Research believes that white-box players' smart bracelets are unlikely to contribute strong revenues due to fierce price competition. GPS and Bluetooth sport smartwatches are expected to benefit from the growing demand in the US and Europe.
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