Google and Samsung have announced they are combining their wearable platforms into a single unified one.
Apple is currently the market leader in the wearables market, with Samsung coming in third-place. Google, on the other hand, hasn’t been able to break into the top five, prompting it to purchase Fitbit to give it a boost.
Google and Samsung are now joining forces, combining Google’s Wear OS and Samsung’s Tizen into a single, unified platform that will help both companies better compete. The unified platform will be called “Wear,” although one can’t help but hope they come up with something with at least a little more pizazz.
Bjorn Kilburn, Google Director of Product Management, Wear, outlined some of the benefits of the unification in more detail.
For performance, our teams collaborated and made apps start up to 30% faster on the latest chipsets with smooth user interface animations and motion. To achieve longer battery life, we’ve worked to optimize the lower layers of the operating system – taking advantage of low-power hardware cores to enable better battery life. That includes handy optimizations like the ability to run the heart rate sensor continuously during the day, track your sleep overnight and still have battery for the next day. Finally, our unified platform will make it easier for developers to build great apps for the watch.