Among wearable devices, Apple’s Apple Watch currently dominates. With Apple’s ECG feature on the Apple Watch, healthcare has become the development direction of wearables around the world.
On April 1, Glory Terminal Co., Ltd. was established with a registered capital of 300 million yuan. It is worth noting that the company’s business scope includes medical device development, production, and sales.
Half a month ago, Huawei Terminal Co., Ltd. also expanded its business scope from the sale of medical devices to the development, production, and sales of medical devices. This is the clarion call for a full-scale advance? Huawei’s medical footprint is expanding step by step.
Domestic technology giants have coveted the medical cake. Also on April 1, Tencent quietly expanded its business scope to include medical device sales. And Dong Mingzhu is more active, claiming to invest 1 billion yuan in the field of medical equipment, “I will take 1 billion out, I am going to fall into the water and disappear, but this must be done.”
Huawei is here to fully enter medical equipment
Recently, a business change of Huawei has attracted attention.
Tianyancha data shows that on April 1, Glory Terminal Co., Ltd. was established with a registered capital of 300 million yuan, and the legal representative is Zheng Liying. The company’s business scope includes commission agency, import and export of goods or technologies, development, production, and sales: communications and Electronic products, Computers, satellite TV receiving antennas, tuners, digital satellite TV receivers, medical devices (Class I, Class II, Class III medical devices) and ancillary products for the aforementioned products, and provide technical consultation and after-sales service; value-added Telecom business operation.
(Source: Tianyancha) Tianyancha shareholder information shows that the company is wholly-owned by Huawei Investment Holdings Co., Ltd., and Huawei’s consumer business CEO Yu Chengdong serves as the company’s chairman.
In fact, Huawei Terminal Co., Ltd. changed the company’s business scope as early as a year ago, adding new businesses such as the sale of medical devices (Class II medical devices). Recently, the company has expanded its business scope again, expanding from the sale of medical devices (Class II medical devices) to the development, production and sales of medical devices (Class I, Class II, and Class III medical devices).
(Source: Tianyancha) Industry insiders said that Huawei and Honor have changed the company’s business scope, and the most direct factor may be to pave the way for Huawei and Honor brand smart wearable devices.
Especially with the advent of the 5G era, wearable devices will bring a revolutionary change to the medical industry. In remote health monitoring, wearables require frequent updates to a central data repository at a low rate. Commonly used networks cannot provide the required technical support when connecting a large number of these devices, and 5G can solve this challenge.
As the device closest to the human body for real-time monitoring of health data, wearable medical health equipment will play a huge role in human health management in the future. As one of the giants of wearable devices in the Chinese market, Huawei will probably not miss its layout in the field of medical wearable devices.
However, as a 5G pioneer, Huawei’s plans in the medical industry go far beyond that. As early as 2016, Huawei released the “White Paper on the Application Directions of Five 5G Industries”. One of them is the application of 5G in the medical industry, including remote monitoring of wearable medicine, remote surgery, remote imaging consultation, telemedicine, and asset supervision.
Tencent, Baidu, Gree… get together, will there be world-class medical giants in China?
Of course, the domestic technology giants targeting medical care are far more than Huawei.
On the same day that Honor Terminal Co., Ltd. was established, Tencent also quietly expanded its business scope to medical device sales. According to the data of Tianyancha, on April 1, Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. underwent an industrial and commercial change, and its business scope added domestic trade; it was engaged in the import and export of goods and technologies (excluding distribution and state-owned, exclusively-controlled, and monopolized commodities); a Class II medical device sales; Class II medical device sales. Licensed business items: sales of three types of medical devices.
As Baidu, which was once known as the three giants of BAT together with Tencent and Ali, has an earlier layout in medical devices. In February 2019, Baidu’s business scope increased the sales of Class II and Class III medical devices, and since then it has invested in Neusoft Medical, and its determination to enter medical devices can be seen in general.
So the question is, why are tech giants marching into medical devices?
As we all know, China’s medical industry, especially in the device industry, is growing rapidly. Since 2017, the scale of my country’s medical device market has exceeded 400 billion yuan, making it the second largest market in the world. Even so, my country’s per capita medical device expenses are still far below the level of developed countries, only 40% of developed countries, and there is still a lot of room for growth.
On the other hand, domestic medical device companies mainly focus on low-end products, and high-end products mainly rely on imports. Despite the transfer of global advanced manufacturing capacity and the improvement of domestic high-end medical equipment manufacturing capacity, China has become an important exporter of medical equipment. However, most enterprises are relatively weak in terms of scale and brand competitiveness, and lack core technologies. They can only export mainly to OEMs, lack their own brands, and are generally at a disadvantage in the international market competition.
The current disadvantage is precisely the biggest opportunity for the tech giants.
Recently, while Gree was making masks and new coronavirus purifiers, Dong Mingzhu specially proposed to invest 1 billion yuan in the field of medical equipment. She explained that the country lacks a lot of medical equipment shortcomings that have not mastered core technology, so Gree wants to enter this field and do high-end medical care.
With the entry of Chinese technology giants such as Tencent and Huawei, times have changed. Many former giants are already in the sunset, and China’s emerging technology giants are rising day by day. The pattern of medical devices in the world may need to change.