Wearable computing looks like the next big thing in the tech industry and there seems to be no stopping Google with their Project Glass initiative. Smartwatches have been something of curiosity for a long time now and a few people have tried the concept; there’s the iM Watch, the Moto Actv and the Pebble. While these are relatively successful in a small growing niche market, none of the big tech brands have tried such a thing. Having said that, both Apple and Samsung have been rumored to be working on a smartwatch for some time now and a Mobile Executive from Samsung has pretty much confirmed that Samsung are working on one.
Bloomberg are reporting that Mobile Executive VP Lee Young Hee said the following in an interview: “We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them.” Not a lot of people might realize this but, Samsung have tried something similar to a smartwatch some years ago. Back in 2009 the South Korean giant released a phone watch that would sync with Outlook and could quite happily be worn on a wrist. Although, it did look a little large – as you’ll note in the image above. Essentially that was just a phone…on a watch strap. Samsung have the Galaxy S brand at the very height of the smartphone market, and tying into that with a smartwatch would be very lucrative for them.
Just when Samsung will be releasing such a thing is unclear but, it’d be a smart move for them to release such a device once the Galaxy S IV was launched worldwide and there’s a good market for the device to be sold into. There’s a lot such a device could offer, notifications, weather, voice commands and even integration into S Voice and S Translator that have both been teased as big features of Samsung’s latest.
The question is though, would anybody buy it? Would anybody use such a device? Let us know in the comments if you’d use such a device.