HTC Won't Be Releasing An Android Wear Smartwatch Anytime Soon

HTC Halfbreak — HTC and Under Armour's logos on the back of the new Halfbreak smartwatch. Weibo

Recent leaks have suggested that HTC will be releasing a new Android Wear smartwatch, codenamed Halfbreak. However, the Taiwanese company just confirmed that it has no plans to do such thing.

“I can tell you that we’re not going to have an Android watch,” HTC’s president of smartphones and connected devices Chialin Chang told Tbreak. “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 latest photos of the Halfbreak smartwatch were leaked this past weekend. They clearly show the HTC logo and the logo of its partner Under Armour. The device also appeared to be running a mid-2015 version of the Android Wear software.

An anonymous source claims that the device shown in the leaked photos is actually “a very old prototype” and that HTC is not actually developing at the moment, according to Android Police. It’s being speculated that the photos may have been published by a former HTC employee, or perhaps someone simply got their hands on the device and decided to share it online thinking it was legit.

Based on Mr. Chang’s statement, it’s possible that HTC has plans of creating wearables but not something that would be released anytime soon. That’s understandable considering that smartwatches aren’t really doing so well in the market. Global smartwatch sales dropped down to 51.6 percent during the third quarter of 2016 when compared to the same period of 2015.

Android Wear in particular has also been suffering with a lot of manufacturers uninterested in making new devices. The version 2.0 of the software has also been delayed several times, which may have further contributed to the problem.

Meanwhile, Google will finally launch Android Wear 2.0 on Feb. 8 alongside two new smartwatches from LG. Huawei will also be releasing the second generation Huawei Watch at the Mobile World Congress 2017, which kicks off on Feb. 26 in Barcelona.

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