LG to unveil Android-powered smartwatches in U.S.

LG Electronics, one of the largest manufacturers of electronic devices in Korea, will unveil its newest smartwatches “LG Watch Sports” and “LG Watch Style” (pictured) in the U.S. on Wednesday. The last time LG electronics released a smartwatch was roughly a year ago when it rolled out “LG Watch Urbane Second Edition,” which gained popularity as the “Lee Se-dol Watch” since the Korean go player was wearing it when he had the historic match against Google’s program DeepMind.

The Korean electronics maker is planning to launch the sales of the two watches immediately after disclosing them in the U.S. Currently, the U.S. is the largest market of smartwatches in the world. Local mobile carriers project that LG’s latest smartwatches will be introduced in Korea early next month.

Industry experts initially predicted that LG Electronics will first showcase their brand new smartwatches at the Mobile World Congress 2017 (MWC 2017), the largest mobile exhibition to be held in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 27. LG is planning to hold an “unpacking event’ for its new premium smartphone G6 for the MWC. The earlier introduction of the smartwatches was aimed at allowing the smartphone to hog the limelight at the international mobile congress in Barcelona.

The latest editions to LG’s fleet of smartwatches are the first models to be equipped with the Android Wear 2.0, an OS dedicated to Google wearable devices. The salient feature of the Android Wear 2.0 is to activate the use of applications independently without pairing to a smartphone. Other functions have been added, including the Android Pay and Google’s voice assistant services. With the convenience for message typing much improved, the new devices feature various additional functions such as workouts tracking, water and dustproof, and wireless recharging. It looks like the smartwatches will be equipped with Google Play Store dedicated to dealing with smartwatches apps.

The size of the smartwatch market surged worldwide from 4 million in 2014 to 20 million in 2015. The rapid growth, however, seemed to have lost some momentum last year, with the annual sales hovering around a total of 21 million units.

Pundits are paying a keen attention to whether LG’s new smartwatches powered by the new Android OS will be able to galvanize the growth of smartwatch market again. “Fierce competition is expected among the three different operating systems – Apple Watch’s iOS, Samsung Gear S3’s Tizen, and LG’s Google Android Wear,” said an industry expert.

Dong-Il Seo dong@donga.com