Huawei CEO: I am Always Confused as to What Smartwatches are for

Many people were excited when smartwatches were first introduced and we saw the original Moto 360 receive a lot of praise from all around the community. This type of excitement was good for the market, but that amount of enthusiasm did not continue sadly. We saw some buzz around some new additions to the market, such as the original Huawei Watch, the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE and even a bit of renewed excitement through devices like the 2nd generation Moto 360 and Huawei Watch.

However, we’ve seen a major slowdown in both releases as well as enthusiasm for smartwatches within the community. This was obvious due to reports of sales numbers from independent companies, and it was even made apparent when companies like Motorola decided to not ship a new smartwatch with the launch of Android Wear 2.0. Some companies just felt that the market was so small that yearly smartwatch releases weren’t worth it.

We have seen many non-technology companies picking up the slack with the release of designer Android Wear smartwatches. It’s actually very surprising how many have stepped up to release these wearables and it will be interesting to see if this trend continues. However, major smartphone OEMs don’t seem to be impressed with the market and Huawei made this abundantly clear when their CEO spoke during the company’s Global Analyst Summit 2017.

He was asked if he felt smartwatch sales were taking away from the sales they could be making from smartphones. The CEO of Huawei, Eric Xu Zhijun, said “I am always confused as to what smartwatches are for when we have smartphones.” Then continued by telling the audience “therefore, when the smartwatch team in Huawei presents their ideas to me with great excitement, I keep reminding them to consider whether there are tangible needs [for these products] in the market.”

Source: South China Morning Post

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