In recent years, smartwatches have become a mainstream product. Top smartphone manufacturers came in this segment and launched their products. While Apple and Samsung moved ahead with their own WatchOS and Tizen OS respectively, other manufacturers adopted Google’s Android wear OS.
For past few months, this segment has not seen any noticeable activity and most of the major manufacturers including Motorola, LG, and Huawei have skipped their smartwatches this year. Google also postponed the Android Wear 2.0 OS release to 2017.
Now the latest information suggests that Google is working to bring two new smartwatches in early 2017 running on Android Wear 2.0. Android Wear product manager Jeff Chang officially confirmed this news in an interview with The Verge.
While few rumors suggest that Google can use the Pixel branding for its smartwatches, he denied any Pixel or Nexus branding for the smartwatches. But it was confirmed that Google will use manufacturers on these watches.
However, the Google smartwatches will be manufactured by the company that already launched Android Wear powered smartwatches and nexus phones. If this is the case, LG, Huawei, and Motorola are the names.
With the launch of the new Google smartwatches, already available smartwatches will also get the Android Wear 2.0 updates. It is worth to note that not all but the recent smartwatches are only eligible for the update.
The fifth and final developer preview of Android Wear 2.0 will be released in January and it is expected to including Android Pay for supporting devices and Google Assistant.
Smartwatch market is going down and lack of innovation is the primary reason. People wants smartwatch battery to last longer. As of now, we need to charge smartwatches daily as compared to smartbands that last for weeks on the single charge.
