Google has long been thought to be making its own range of smartwatches. The closest we have come is with the close working relationship between Mobvoi and Google in development of the TicWatch Pro 3 (review here), and now that Google and Samsung are working more closely together in the development of Wear OS. Google also purchased Fitbit, which led many to believe the move is coming. A new report from Insider claims that Google is now finally making its own in-house smartwatch that will launch next year, according to a person familiar with the matter.
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The Google smartwatch, codenamed Rohan, is being worked on by Google’s Pixel hardware group and not by its Fitbit business. While it isn’t cleared if the wearable will be called the Pixel Watch, the new smartwatch will serve the same kind of role as the current Pixel smartphones do for Android. It serves as an example product of what Google believes its Android platform should look like and achieve, and what hardware complements it perfectly.
Google has been making its own smartphones for years and has its own line of wireless Pixel earbuds as well. Android Wear was released back in 2014, yet we have never seen a Google smartwatch.
The launch of Wear OS 3 will be a big shift for Google in its wearables software efforts. It has been long neglected, so launching the new platform with its own hardware to once show off what the software is capable of makes a lot of sense. The LG Watch Sport and LG Watch Style, released in 2017, were originally supposed to be marketed as part of the Pixel brand, but an employee told Insider that Google hardware boss Rick Osterloh axed the idea because they “didn’t look like what belonged in the Pixel family.”
