Chinese tech giant Lenovo has confirmed that it won’t be launching a Motorola smartwatch in 2017 despite the release of Google’s Android Wear 2.0 software as it doesn’t see enough of a market opportunity.
Moto’s head of global product development, Shakil Barkat, said that the company doesn’t “see enough pull in the market to put [a new smartwatch] out this time,” but it might change its mind once smartwatch technology has already improved, according to The Verge.
Barkat also explained that wearables don’t have broad enough appeal for the company to be motivated enough to continue putting out new smartwatches every year.
The executive suggested that there may be a new smartwatch in Motorola’s future somewhere down the road, saying that the “wrist still has value,” but the short-term prognosis is pretty grim.
Smartwatches were once considered as the next big device, that would see sales take off after the smartphone revolution. However, that hasn’t happened with only the Apple Watch managing to rake in some big numbers.
Sure the fitness band segment has done well, but smartwatches by themselves have not become a huge market.
Motorola isn’t the only smartwatch market that has backtracked from launching new models. Huawei too hasn’t had a new smartwatch for quite sometime. Its Huawei Watch still remains the only Android Wear smartwatch in the market, and this was launched in 2015.
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