Samsung was one of the first OEMs to make smartwatches and released more models than any other for that matter. They are available in different shapes and build qualities, metal and plastic, some have integrated cameras and not to mention, they have used different operating systems (their in-house Tizen and Android Wear). Their flagship model, the Gear S, which was released about 8 months ago, is still one of the most interesting devices out there, integrating a huge curved AMOLED display with good resolution and even a Nano SIM card slot to get 3G connectivity on the go, plus a variety of sensors dedicated to measure physical activity, all of this enclosed in a shell made out of steel and glass.
Samsung is expected to launch another flagship this year and it should be a game-changing experience, aside from switching its shape from curved rectangular to a flat circular one keeping the same pixel density, it will supposedly be surrounded by a mechanical ring used to operate the UI, which according to the SDK it will look very modern with clean and simple design choices for its elements. That smartwatch is believed to be unveiled along with their new phablet of this year, the Galaxy Note 5, expected to make its debut in September.
Despite being three months from now, that date cannot come soon enough for the company, as it is being reported they have seen a loss in the market share for the first quarter of 2015. On the last quarter of 2014, they occupied a market share of 47.8% while in the next three months it was reduced to just 23.1%. A lot of wearable devices have been launched in 2015, most of them using Android Wear and some of them good looking options. The benefit of Wear of course, is that it allows these devices to be paired with a whole range of smartphones from different brands, while the Samsung models only work with the company’s smartphone offerings. This could indicate that consumers actually look for better compatibility while buying a smartwatch. It is not likely that Samsung will ditch the Tizen OS for their new watch, but perhaps they should consider making it a little more open and updating it to keep the same functionality found on Android Wear or Apple’s WatchOS 2.