Wearables

Swarovski Smart Watch “for her” to be unveiled at Baselworld 2017

Swarovski Smart Watch teaser

CES 2017 kicked off yesterday with the usual frenzy of press releases and new products. Among the many companies holding events, Qualcomm announced the upcoming Snapdragon 835 mobile processor. It also teased that Swarovski will unveil an Android Wear-powered smartwatch at Baselworld 2017. The teaser video shown during the event reveals only that the Swarovski Smart Watch is designed “for her” and […]

Fitbit acquires assets from Pebble

Pebble Core

Fitbit today confirmed rumours that started to swirl last week that it will acquire some of Pebble’s assets. It announced that is acquiring “specific assets” that include key personnel and intellectual property related to software and firmware development. As reported earlier, hardware is not part of the deal. “With basic wearables getting smarter and smartwatches adding health and fitness capabilities, we see […]

Pebble Time 2 and Core to be cancelled as Fitbit acquisition looms

Pebble 2 and Pebble Time 2

Rumours emerged last week that Fitbit was looking to acquire struggling smartwatch company Pebble. A new report yesterday shed new details. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg suggests that the buyout will focus on Pebble’s software assets. The deal reportedly includes job offers for about 40 percent of Pebble’s staff, mostly software engineers. Pebble staff in other roles, such as interface designer […]

Lenovo puts future Moto 360 smartwatch plans on hold

Motorola Moto 360 Sport

Motorola yesterday confirmed that it will not launch new Moto 360 smartwatches to coincide with the arrival of Android Wear 2.0 in early 2017. Lenovo, which acquired Motorola, was among a number of smartwatch manufacturers that announced this fall that they would not launch additional smartwatches this year. It now appears that we will not see any Moto smartwatches in 2017 either. Shakil Barkat, head […]

Smartwatch shipments collapse in Q3 2016

Graph - Going down

All is not well for the global smartwatch market. Year-over-year shipment figures dipped for the first time in the second quarter of the year. Things did not improve in Q3 as International Data Corporation (IDC) reported yesterday that the market experienced a “round of growing pains” with another year-over-year decline in shipment volumes. Volumes dropped 51.6% from a total of 5.6 million […]

Android Wear 2.0 delayed to “early 2017”

Google Android Wear 2.0

Google has delayed the launch of the latest version of its Android Wear wearables platform. When it was announced at Google I/O 2016 this summer, the company said that Android Wear 2.0 would be out sometime this fall. Google will instead extend the developer preview program into next year. We’ve gotten tons of great feedback from the developer community about Android Wear […]

No more Android Wear smartwatches from Huawei, LG and Motorola in 2016

Google Android Wear 2.0

The only new Android Wear smartwatch to be announced at IFA 2016 was the ASUS ZenWatch 3. Other Android Wear partners such as Motorola and Sony notably did not announce new smartwatches. CNET has now learned that Huawei, LG and Motorola all have no plans to release new Android Wear smartwatches this year. Last year, all three announced new wearables at […]