Almost every major tech company is making a bet on smartwatches.<\/p>\n
We’ve heard rumors of an Apple iWatch for a while now. We have knowledge of Google working on a smartwatch. Executives at Microsoft’s suppliers in Asia told Bloomberg last month that the company asked them to ship displays for touch-enabled watch devices. LG is reportedly working on a smartwatch, and so is Samsung.<\/p>\n
But if any company is going to succeed in the market, it sounds like it’s going to be Samsung or Apple, or maybe even both.<\/p>\n
“Samsung and Apple are traditional hardware companies and have spent nearly the last decade combining powerful technologies into the smartphone,” Skooks Pong, VP of technology at Synapse, tells Business Insider.<\/p>\n
Synapse is the engineering firm behind the Nike FuelBand. About a decade ago, Pong worked on early prototypes of Microsoft’s SPOT smartwatches.<\/p>\n
“[Apple and Samsung have] been able to overcome challenges like extending battery power, while minimizing its size and they’ve combined multiple technologies like Bluetooth, GPS and NFC into a small piece of hardware,” Pong says.<\/p>\n
Pong notes that the smartwatch will present similar challenges to smartphones because of its small size. In order for a smartwatch to truly appeal to the masses, it will also need to do more than just send notifications to your wrist.<\/p>\n
“It’s about introducing a device that consumers never even knew they needed, like Apple did with the iPod,” Pong says. “Because of the need to combine sophisticated technologies into a body-worn device, based on their track record Apple or a Samsung would be better poised to create a transformative device. But with Google, you can’t ever count them out.”<\/p>\n
The latest rumor about the Google smartwatch is that Motorola would manufacture it for them. That makes sense, given that Google acquired the company for $12.4 billion last year, though initially just for its patents. for its hardware expertise.<\/p>\n
Google hasn’t had much luck with its hardware products. Its Nexus phones sales could not even compare to the iPhone. And then there was the Nexus Q, Google’s very short-lived media streaming device.<\/p>\n
Motorola hasn’t fared much better. Since Google’s acquisition, Motorola has not had any “hit” products. By the end of last year, Motorola’s market share fell from 2.2% worldwide at the time of the purchase to 1.7%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost every major tech company is making a bet on smartwatches. We’ve heard rumors of an Apple iWatch for a…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1096],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-technology"},"yoast_head":"\n