Leading up to Google’s big hardware event, which took place earlier this month, there were rumors about Google-made smartwatches. Obviously those two smartwatches didn’t debut at their October 4th event in San Francisco. But that doesn’t mean they were canned. In fact, according to Evleaks they are going to be launching in the first quarter of 2017 with Android Wear 2.0. This likely means that they will be the launch hardware for the new version of Android Wear – which was just recently pushed back from debuting this year, to early next year.
Now the big question is when in Q1, will these smartwatches debut. Well that’s a good question. Considering Google typically only holds two events per year, with Google I/O around May/June time-frame and then their big Fall event. However, the first quarter is home to two of the biggest trade shows in the tech industry, CES happening in January, and then Mobile World Congress happening at the end of February. It’s tough to say which one these smartwatches may debut at, considering Google doesn’t typically hold product announcements at either trade show. But where they are now an OEM, they may just change that going forward.
These smartwatches will likely continue the “Made By Google” trend that Google started this month. While they may be manufactured by another company, they will likely still be designed by Google. Which is quite a different thing from what these other smartwatches have been. With Google working with a few smartphone manufacturers to make smartwatches running Android Wear. These could be Pixel branded smartwatches, but there’s no confirmation on that just yet. It’s also worth noting that a number of smartphone makers held off on announcing Android Wear smartwatches this year, likely due to the fact that Android Wear 2.0 was coming soon, and it’s a fairly large overhaul to the OS. Hopefully we’ll see a slew of new smartwatches come after these two Google-made smartwatches are finally announced and made available.
2017 should be a pretty big year for Google and Android Wear, especially with Android Wear 2.0. It’s something that many tech enthusiasts are excited to see come to fruition.