Overview of wearable device development
（1） Policy guidance
With the acceleration of Chinese population aging and the change of lifestyle, the incidence rate of chronic diseases such as hypertension has increased. Health has become a hot topic in society. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee clearly put forward the task of promoting the construction of healthy China and raised “healthy China” to the height of national development strategy. The general secretary pointed out that “without the health of the whole people, there will be no well-off society for the whole people”. With the rapid development of China’s economy and the rapid improvement of Internet and Internet of things technology, the task of maintaining health has been upgraded from passive treatment to active prevention and monitoring. Home monitoring using wearable devices has become an effective management model for chronic disease self-management and sub-health status monitoring clearly put forward by who and governments. It is also one of the important directions for the development of health industry in various countries.
On October 25, 2016, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the outline of the “healthy China 2030” plan, which pointed out the need to develop Internet-based health services, cultivate a number of distinctive health management service industries, and explore and promote the development of wearable devices, intelligent health electronic products and health medical mobile application services. Subsequently, the general office of the State Council proposed to support the design and development of intelligent products suitable for the elderly, health monitoring wearable devices, health and elderly care mobile application software (APP) in several opinions on comprehensively liberalizing the elderly care service market and improving the quality of elderly care services. In the same year, the office of the State Council, in the opinion on promoting the development of Internet plus medical health, mentioned the use of wearable devices to obtain vital signs data, and support the development of medical and health related wearable devices. The guidance on promoting and standardizing the development of health and medical big data applications issued by the general office of the State Council points out that it is necessary to support the development of medical intelligent devices and intelligent wearable devices, explore and promote the standardized access of data resources generated by wearable devices, intelligent health electronic products and health and medical mobile applications to the population health information platform. Support the research and development of health care related artificial intelligence technology, large-scale medical equipment, health and rehabilitation aids, wearable devices and related micro sensors.
The Ministry of industry reform and development and the Ministry of wearable Information Technology issued the specific action plan for promoting the upgrading of UAV and wearable products in 2018-2020. On March 30, 2020, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the opinions on building a more perfect system and mechanism for market-oriented allocation of factors, which proposed to give full play to the role of industry associations and chambers of Commerce and promote the standardization of data collection in the fields of artificial intelligence, wearable devices, Internet of vehicles, Internet of things and so on. On September 23, 2020, the Ministry of industry and information technology and the China Disabled Persons’ Federation jointly issued guidance on promoting information accessibility. It is proposed to encourage the R & D and barrier free transformation of information barrier free terminal equipment, cultivate a number of information barrier free terminal equipment manufacturers with high scientific and technological level and excellent product cost performance, promote the barrier free transformation and optimization of existing terminal equipment, support the development of barrier free intelligent terminal products integrating disability and health, and encourage the R & D and production of wearable and portable monitoring Intelligent elderly care equipment such as home-based elderly care monitoring. The wearable device industry will usher in a period of rapid development under the guidance of policies.
（2） Economic environment
According to the quarterly tracking report of China’s wearable device market by IDC, the market research organization, the shipment of China’s wearable device market was 99.24 million units in 2019, with a year-on-year increase of 37.1%. The wearable device consumer market is becoming more and more mature. Apple will continue to maintain its leading position in the global wearable device market in the second quarter of 2020. In the second quarter of 2020, the overall wearable device market increased by 14.1%, the market share of top manufacturers such as apple, Huawei and Xiaomi increased, and Fitbit decreased by 29.2%. Compared with the same period in 2019, Apple’s shipments of wearable devices in the second quarter of 2020 increased by 5.9 million units, a year-on-year increase of 25.3%, and its market share increased from 31.1% to 34.2%. Huawei ranked second, followed by Xiaomi, Samsung and Fitbit. In December 2020, IDC released the third quarter data report of global wearable devices in 2020. According to the data, in the third quarter of 2020, the global shipments of wearable devices increased by 35.1% year-on-year to 125.3 million units. In the first three quarters of 2020, the global shipments of wearable devices were 289 million.
