HTC’s Android Wear smartwatch has officially been quashed, for now. The official announcement comes just days after leaked photos spurred rumours of a revival of project “Halfbeak”.
Chialin Chang, HTC’s President of Smartphones and Connected Devices said, “I can tell you that we’re not going to have an Android watch. I don’t think we’ve nailed it with [the experience of] watches. Android watch is one thing but even Apple as a big brand is declining [in watches]. We are not going to have a watch in the short term.”
The announcement comes in the wake of declining HTC smartphone sales. HTC 10 was praised for packing a host of features but its price-point was easily undermined by Chinese smartphone manufacturers.
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It turns out that the “leaked” photos of a HTC smartwatch are in fact photos of a device that was cancelled long ago. Reports show that smartwatches experienced a 52 percent decline in 2016. Apple Watch was well-received upon its inception but in the past year, sales have been stagnating and opinion dwindling. Perhaps we should accept the fact that smartwatches are dying out and hope that Android Wear will churn out other devices on these lines.
Global manufacturers have been warming up to the smartwatch segment but it seems that the future is “half-bleak”…
