Samsung and Canon emerged as the big winners at this year's HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards on Thursday.

With its television sets and mobile gadgets such as the Galaxy Note 3, Samsung snagged nine accolades in a ceremony at Goodwood Park Hotel. The South Korean electronics giant won seven awards at last year's event.

Japanese firm Canon won eight awards for its cameras and printers, one more than last year.

Winners were chosen by the editorial team of technology magazine HWM and tech portal HardwareZone.com along with more than 250,000 votes from Singapore-based readers.

The awards, organised by SPH Magazines, are now in their fifth year and honour the best in consumer electronic gadgets and services. This year's event covered the period from from December 2012 to November last year.

The number of reader nominations for the Awards increased to 186 across 42 categories, up from 169 last year over 41 categories.

Apple won seven awards, four more than last year. These included readers' best premium smartphone brand and editor's best consumer 10-inch tablet for its iPad Air.

This year's awards introduced a new category for the best innovative products and cutting-edge technology. The inaugural winners were Western Digital's HGST Ultrastar He6 - a 6TB hard disk drive filled with helium, Intel's fourth generation core processors, Olympus's OM-D E-M1 compact mirrorless camera and Sony's Alpha A7 Series cameras.