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Android Wear and smartwatches are in a bit of a flux at the moment. Other than the ASUS ZenWatch 3 and Fossil smartwatches, we haven’t seen a new Android Wear smartwatch in a few months, and it seems more and more users are gravitating to fitness trackers.
Earlier this year, there was an Indiegogo campaign for a new smartwatch by the name of CoWatch by Cronologics. The software for the smartwatch took advantage of Amazon’s Alexa voice services and looked to be the first smartwatch to do so.
The IndieGogo campaign ended back in June with devices expected to begin shipping in October. However, that never happened and the company has announced that it has been hired by Google to work on Android Wear.
We started Cronologics in 2014 as a platform for smart, diverse smartwatches. Today, we’re excited to announce the next phase of our journey — we are joining Google to help grow the portfolio of watches powered by Android Wear. We see strong alignment with Android Wear’s mission and look forward to working with our new colleagues at Google to continue pushing the frontier of wearable technology and smartwatches with Android Wear 2.0 and beyond.
Obviously, we won’t see the CoWatch actually released to those who backed the smartwatch, but there’s a bigger question here. Google has already pushed back the release of Android Wear 2.0 until next year, and many of the mainstream manufacturers for AW smartwatches have claimed they don’t know when the next smartwatch will be released. So, what exactly is Google planning to do?
The acquisition of a company looking to integrate Amazon’s Alexa into the software doesn’t really make much sense. Until you start looking at it from the aspect of integrating and manufacturing a new wearable which features Google Assistant out of the box.
It’s no secret that Google wants its Assistant on everything and anything, so it makes sense that wearables are the next step. The integration and interaction with other devices is key, so it will be an interesting story to watch over the coming months.
Plus, it’s important to keep in mind the rumor that came through earlier this year regarding Android Wear smartwatches. The rumor claimed that Google was looking to develop two new smartwatches in-house, along with Google Assistant ready to go out of the box. Unfortunately, since those rumors surfaced, there hasn’t been too much said about Google’s plans.
Unlike others, I’m still holding out hope that Android Wear 2.0 is the renovation the market needs, provided that manufacturers get on board. We’ll have to see how this all plays out, but things may begin looking up for smartwatch lovers.
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