Samsung Smart Watch Is Confirmed By Executive
Watch will compete with Apple iWatch as manufacturers look beyond smartphones
A Samsung executive has confirmed the existence of a Samsung smart watch that will compete with the heavily-rumoured Apple iWatch in an interview.
Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile division, told Bloomberg that such a product was on its way, but would not divulge any details regarding features, pricing or speculate on a potential release date for the device.
“We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long,” Hee is quoted as saying. “We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them.”
Samsung smart watch confirmed
Speculation about a Samsung smart watch has intensified in recent months, with a number of purported screenshots released onto the Internet in February. The 500 x 500 pixel black and white images showed a Korean language operating system that uses a tile based interface with applications for music, email and maps.
One screen indicates that the device includes only 235MB of storage space, which would seem to suggest that the watch is intended more as an interface for a nearby smartphone or tablet, rather than a stand-alone device. It could be paired with the recently announced Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone or the Samsung Galaxy Tab range.
Both Apple and Samsung have been exploring the possibility of new product lines as the worldwide smartphone market reaches saturation point. A patent filing from Apple last month detailed a “wearable accessory device” has provided the most convincing evidence yet the company is working on the so-called iWatch.
Samsung will be keen to get its own smart watch onto the market as quickly as possible as it is believed that the first manufacturer to do so will have a better chance of locking users into their mobile ecosystem. One advantage that the Korean manufacturer has is that it produces its own chips and screens, meaning that it could sell the device cheaper than the iWatch.
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