Companies like Samsung and LG are starting to realize that the real mobile market money doesn’t come from making mobile devices, it comes from making the software ecosystems that power those mobile devices. This is why Samsung is putting so much energy into Tizen and why LG is putting so much energy into webOS. That’s why LG has announced an upcoming webOS-powered smartwatch.
South Korea‘s LG Electronics Inc. will use the WebOS platform as an alternative to Google Inc. ’s Android operating system in a new smartwatch lineup to be launched early next year, a person familiar with the plans said. “We’re going to slowly try to build an (software) ecosystem around areas we can have more control over,” the person said on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. LG, a latecomer to the market, has introduced a few smartwatches powered by Google software, with one of the more recent models, called the G Watch R, running on the Android Wear operating system. Another person familiar with the matter said LG has plans to release another smartwatch that can make calls without having to be linked to a smartphone early this year. But the person wouldn’t say which operating system it would run.
