Back in 2013, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Gear, the South Korean tech giant’s first smartwatch. This was shortly followed up during MWC 2014 with the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and the Gear Fit. Now we should note that all devices run on Tizen, with the Galaxy Gear being the latest to receive the Tizen update, and that none of them run on Android Wear which is Google’s answer to Android for wearables. Does this mean that Samsung plans to make it on their own and not rely on the popularity and ecosystem of the Android platform? Perhaps, perhaps not, but according to a recent report from CNET, they claim that Samsung could very well debut a smartwatch powered by Android Wear at the upcoming Google I/O 2014 conference that will be kicking off next week.
Google’s wearables push is about to get a big boost. Samsung plans to introduce its first Android Wear device at Google’s developer conference next week, people familiar with the matter told CNET. The wearable will be a smartwatch, much like the Gear devices Samsung has released in the past year, the people said. Samsung has been working on an Android Wear smartwatch that uses Samsung’s own chips, as well as another model built off of processors from Qualcomm, one person said. It’s unclear which version Samsung will show at Google I/O. Android Wear is Google’s operating system for smartwatches and other wearable devices. Companies have been looking to wearables as a new market of opportunity as smartphone and tablet growth slows. By the end of this year, over 19 million wearable devices will ship worldwide, tripling last year’s figure, market researcher IDCreported in April. By 2018, wearable shipments are expected to hit 111.9 million worldwide shipments — still a small number compared with the 1.7 billion smartphones expected to be sold that year. Samsung declined to comment on the Android Wear device but said in a statement that it’s “committed to relentless innovation and new products are always in development.”
