At Google I/O 2021, Google and Samsung announced their partnership for making a unified and powerful wearable platform. These companies are merging their Wear OS and Tizen-based software platform. The resulting platform is currently being called “Wear” but it may not be the final name.
Google claims that apps will load faster, battery life will be better and users will have more choices & more apps.
Google and Samsung both struggled to compete against Apple and watchOS. If we just look at the numbers of Q4 2020, Apple was the top smartwatch maker with a 40% market share. Huawei and Samsung had just 10% and 8% of the market share.
Samsung’s Tizen-based smartwatches are good and offer a good alternatives to Apple Watch. If Google and Samsung work together, they can make a good wearable platform and give Apple a good fight.
The next version of Galaxy Watch will be the first smartwatch to leverage this partnership. It will be interesting to see how well this unified platform competes against Apple’s WatchOS that is currently ruling the wearable market.
Samsung has also promised that existing Dizen-based smartwatches will keep getting updates. Customers will also get an option to export their health data so it can be used on future devices.
