2014 a good year for wearable tech: institute

February 25, 2014 Leave a comment

2014 a good year for wearable tech: institute

By John Liu, The China Post
February 18, 2014, 12:19 am TWN

TAIPEI, Taiwan — As demand for PCs and notebooks dwindles and the growth potential of smartphones and tablets is expected to decline, wearable devices such as smart watches and bracelets are expected to take the market in 2014, a local research institute said yesterday.

The Industrial Economics and Knowledge Research Center (IEK) under the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) held a press conference yesterday to explore critical issues in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry today.

The IEK predicts a total shipment of 31.7 million smart watches and bracelets in 2014. As smartphones and other mobile devices become more prevalent, the IEK said that 2014 will be a year that witnesses “smart everywhere.” The focus of development in the ICT industry will switch from the pursuit of “high efficiency” to the technical development of simplicity, stability, lightweight, durability and energy-conservation.

With the advance of technological development, industry players from mainland China have developed their own brands over the years. IEK forecast that another developing country, India, is slated to follow the same route to cultivate smartphone brands locally.

As the National Science Council recently launched a “Small Apple” project to cultivate an industry to focus on the development of various mobile devices for different niche market, IEK analyst Jeremy Tung (黃鍾明) said much depends on local businesses’ cohesive cooperation to allow this endeavor bear fruit.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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