It was last month when Fossil announced that it would be selling $40 million worth of its smartwatch intellectual property to Google, with a portion of its research and development team set to be joining the search giant as well. The announcement marked Google's growing ambition in the wearable segment, and new job listings from the company indicate that it may be building its own smartwatch device.
According to one of the job listings, Google is looking to hire a vice president for its wearables hardware engineering. The chosen applicant will be responsible for designing, developing, and shipping all wearable products from the company. Additionally, the Mountain View-based company wants to recruit a design manager for wearables.
Google first made inroads into the wearable space in early 2014 when it unveiled the Android Wear operating system for smartwatches, which was rebranded to Wear OS early last year. However, the company relies on external vendors to run Wear OS on their respective products, including Fossil.
Despite rumors in mid-2018 claiming that Google was planning to announce Pixel-branded smartwatches alongside the Pixel 3 series, that didn't happen. But its new job listings may be strong indications that it has serious plans to finally create a Made by Google smartwatch.
Source: Google Careers (1), (2) via Android Police
3 Comments - Add comment