With Apple said to be stepping up its work to bring a smartwatch of its own to market, it’s safe to say that Samsung has already put its stake into the ground as far as wearable technology goes. Already having launched more watches and wearables than any company needs to, Samsung is said to be set to bring not one, but two more to market sooner rather than later and is expected to debut at least one of them at the upcoming Google I/O event.
Taking place on June 25th–26th, Google I/O is the Android maker’s big developer conference. Similar to Apple’s WWDC but on a slightly smaller scale, I/O also has its own opening keynote at which new products and services are announced. It’s during this keynote that Samsung is likely to show off its new smartwatch. The reason for an announcement at I/O rather than a Samsung-only event is the new watch’s use of Android Wear, the custom-make mobile operating system that Google has put together in the hope that it will stop OEMs from shoehorning Android-proper onto wearables. It will understandably tie in with Android smartphones, however.
Samsung Gear 2 Smartwatch
According to sources speaking to CNet, Samsung has not one, but two new smartwatches up – or should that be ‘on’ – its sleeve. Both are ostensibly identical bar the use of different chips, with one packing Samsung-made silicon with the other using parts made by Qualcomm. It’s unclear which will be announced at Google I/O, but we expect that the two chipsets will be for different territories rather than both being on sale side-by-side. We’ll find out next week.
Wearable technology is currently just waiting to take off, and many believe that an entry from Apple will legitimize a market that is almost waiting for a hero product to capture the attention of the public. Google’s Android Wear initiative will no doubt go some way to helping that process along though, especially now that OEM’s have a bespoke version of Android to work with. What the likes of Samsung will lay over the top of that operating system though, remains to be seen.
Fingers crossed it’s not a flavor of TouchWiz.
We will be covering Google I/O extensively, so stay tuned for more updates.
(Source: CNet)
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