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No new Android Wear watches from Motorola, LG or HUAWEI this year, report claims
If you’ve been paying attention to the wearable space over the last few months, you may have noticed there’s been no shortage of new Android Wear devices making their way to market. Most of the latest Android Wear watches have been from newer companies, too, like Michael Kors, Polar, Nixon, and a few others.
And now that Apple has announced its new Watch Series 2 and Samsung the new Gear S3, the smartwatch space is about to get heated. But unfortunately, according to a new report, some of the veteran Android Wear watch makers are going to sit this one out.
CNET has reported that LG, HUAWEI and Lenovo’s Motorola have no plans to release new smartwatches in the remaining months of the year. Now, even though there are only about three months left in 2016, this is still unfortunate news to anyone who has been waiting for a Moto 360 (3rd Gen.) or HUAWEI Watch 2.
This is quite an odd shift from last year’s big Android Wear push. Just in 2015 alone, Motorola unveiled the Moto 360 (2nd Gen.) and Moto 360 Sport, HUAWEI launched multiple variants of the Watch, and LG took the wraps off its Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE. And this year, pretty much the only Android Wear veteran to announce a new watch has been ASUS with the new ZenWatch 3.
Why are these three OEMs holding off on bringing new smartwatches to market?
According to an unnamed HUAWEI executive, HUAWEI says it’s waiting for components in smartwatches to shrink and for processors to gain efficiency before moving forward with a successor to the HUAWEI Watch.
So what does this all mean? Well, Android Wear isn’t dead, nor is it dying. I think all three of these companies have pretty good reasons for not bringing new smartwatches to market this year. It looks like we’ll just have to wait until sometime in 2017 before we see these OEMs come back to market with new watches.
What do you think? Is this a good move for LG, HUAWEI and Motorola, or would you rather have seen new devices out of these companies this year? Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments below.