75% of Chinese consumers interested in buying wearables, according to Baidu report

Wearable devices have become the one of the most anticipated digital products after smartphone and tablets, although there is still a long way to go for manufacturers to commercialize them. This anticipation is demonstrated in a report recently released by Baidu with 93.1 percent of the interviewees familiar with the concept of wearables — and 70 percent to 75 percent are willing to purchase one. (See the full report in Chinese.)

Giving no consideration to prices, 49.3 percent and 46.6 percent of the customers may purchase smart bracelets and smart watches, two main categories of wearable devices, respectively, while 19.5 percent and 29.1 percent will definitely purchase one.

According to the report, 48.1 percent of the users hope wearable devices can help them to keep fit and 37 percent want to use them to overcome laziness and implement sports plans.

The report adds that users are interested in features such as body-sensing interactions and cross-platform cloud data. Customers look forward to more apps dedicated to wearable devices, rather than apps already available on smartphone.

Wearable devices already released by Chinese manufacturers include Shanda’s Geak Watch, Qihoo’s 360 Child Guard, T-Watch, inWatch, and CWatch, among others.

The future wearable device market has abundant manufacturers, but lacks a common platform, like Android and iOS for smartphones, which enables all related wearable devices to operate and store data on it.

Research institution iiMedia predicted that the market size of Chinese wearable devices would reach 11.49 billion yuan ($1.87 billion) and shipments of 40 million units by 2015 (source in Chinese).

And it’s not just China: Wearable device mania has swept the whole world. An Australian research institute predicted that one fifth of Australians would have one wearable device each in the future year, with shipment reaching 36 million units (source in Chinese).

image credit: Baidu

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This story originally appeared on TechNode. Copyright 2013