Social-Media
Facebook is secretly building and planning to sell a smartwatch next year.
According to a new report from The Information, Facebook is building a smartwatch as part of its continuing hardware efforts. The device is said to be an Android-based smartwatch, although the report does not say whether Facebook intends to run Google's Wear OS for the device. It also says that Facebook is working on building its own hardware device operating system and that wearable future iterations can instead run the software.
The smartwatch would have messaging, health, and fitness features, the report says, and as part of the growing hardware ecosystem of the social network, it would join Facebook's Oculus virtual reality headsets and Portal video chat devices.
Facebook is also working on branded Ray-Ban smart glasses to come out later this year and a separate research initiative for augmented reality known as Project Aria, which has been working on for some time now as part of the company's wider AR explorations. Facebook declined to comment on any smartwatch projects planned for
The hardware ambitions of the social networking giant are no secret. Bloomberg reported last month that the company has more than 6,000 employees working on different augmented and virtual reality projects and as part of existing hardware divisions such as Oculus and Portal, as well as experimental initiatives under its Facebook Reality Labs division.
And although Facebook has not expressed a strong interest in health and fitness equipment in the past, with its Oculus headsets and forthcoming smart glasses, the company has a track record of wearables.
The neural interface start-up CTRL-Labs was also acquired by Facebook in 2019. Without the need for traditional touchscreen or physical button inputs, CTRL-Labs specialized in building wireless input mechanisms, including devices that could transmit electric signals from the brain to computing devices. Whatever wearables Facebook builds in the future, including a smartwatch, smart glasses, or future Oculus headsets, may be considered by the startup's intellectual property and ongoing research.
