Wearables are all the rage this year, and for good reason too. Google recently announced its Android Wear platform, taking wearables to the next level by providing proper Android support for a different form factor other than a tablet or smartphone. Android Wear is comprised of a custom build of Android that’s made specifically to deliver notifications to a device that you wear on your body, and likely features plenty of other goodies that we just haven’t seen yet. Of course the crown jewels of the announcement were Motorola’s Moto 360 watch, a round smartwatch that introduced a new form factor for smart wearables, and LG’s G Watch with it’s always-on screen, both of which promise to rock your socks off when they launch this summer. But what about all the other manufacturers that announced the partnership with Google on the Android Wear platform? Besides Motorola and LG’s announcements of their smartwatches, how about Samsung, ASUS, HTC, Fossil and Intel, just to name a few partners? Well it looks like ASUS has finally announced their plans, or at least sort of anyway.
During an earnings call on Wednesday, ASUS CEO Jerry Shen indicated that the company was planning to launch a smart wearable in Q3 2014, which is only a few months down the road now. He added that the company was “only testing the waters a little bit” and wouldn’t be going hog wild with wearables this year, but next year may be a different story depending on how Android Wear and ASUS devices take off. He also said “In partnering with Google, we will launch some very good products, but we also have more ambitious goals,” hinting that Android Wear isn’t the only thing they have in the cards, and that the company may be launching more than just a smartwatch as well. ASUS already has its Padone and Fonepad devices, both of which are hybrids between phones and tablets, and it’s possible that ASUS will experiment with wearable hybrids as well. With tablet revenue only at 12 percent of the company’s income streamthe company expects mobile revenue to eclipse its PC revenue by 2017, so wearables and smartphones will have a big part to play in all of that. Expect more news of ASUS device as we close in on Q3 this year.