The market research house Canalys is projecting that 53.6 million cellular smartwatches -- ones that don't need to be tethered to phones -- will be sold in the the year 2020. At first blush, that looks like a pretty enthusiastic prediction, particularly in light of the company's wildly optimistic count of 7.5 million being sold this year. The underlying logic, though, … [Read more...]
LG’s Untethered Android Wear Smart Watch is Pretty Rough, Says The Verge
The road to market for LG Watch Urbane Second Edition LTE has been as long and rocky as the product's name itself. The first Android Wear watch to be able to operate untethered from a mobile phone, it was supposed to ship at the end of last year but was held back for unspecfied technical problems. Now that it's out, The Verge has a review, and it's less than wildly … [Read more...]
GSMA Introduces eSIM for Wearables, Other Devices
The GSMA is the international organization that's in charge of the global wireless standard GSM and its offshoots like LTE; if your phone (or tablet) uses a SIM card, it's running GSM. It's also the group that runs next week's Mobile World Congress. There are two problems with SIM cards: they're huge for electronic components, and they're tied to specific carriers. In … [Read more...]