Evaluating and Predicting Technology Development in Smartwatches Using TFDEA

Analyzing and evaluating the efficiency and predicting the rate of change is of great importance for measuring the performance of decision-making and planning units to improve their performance, so that the main competition of industrialists is over the speed of change. This issue becomes more important for electronic industries where the speed of change is high. Smart watches, as one of the advanced tools, have faced many changes and advances in recent years. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the efficiency of smart watches and also to predict the rate of technological change of the technology of these watches. In this study, a framework has been created using the nonparametric method of data envelopment analysis and the approach of technology prediction using data envelopment analysis to estimate the rate of technological change in smart watches or any smart device. Initially, the performance of 74 models of smartwatches released between 2016 and 2021 was calculated in the year of release, and then, using a technology forecasting approach, the rate of change for each device and the average change across all devices were examined and calculated. Finally, using research findings and available time series data, the conditions and rate of change for smartwatches for the next period were predicted.