Huawei's Upcoming Smartwatches Might Run Samsung's Tizen OS Instead Of Google's Android Wear

IBTimes reported earlier this month that LG, Motorola and Huawei won’t be releasing any new Android Wear smartwatches for the remainder of 2016. Now, new information has surfaced that Huawei’s next smartwatches might be running Samsung’s Tizen OS instead of Google’s software.

Huawei has apparently partnered with Samsung to bring Tizen OS to its upcoming new smartwatches, according to The Korean Herald. The reason why Huawei decided to ditch Android Wear was because Google “had not been very collaborative.” Samsung is said to be fully cooperating with the company to tailor Tizen to the Chinese company’s smartwatches.

In short, it looks like Huawei wasn’t happy with Google’s tight grip on Android Wear. The Chinese manufacturer wants to have more room for software customization just like how it is on its Android-powered smartphones.

If Samsung is fully cooperating with Huawei, this could potentially mean that Tizen OS could look entirely different on the Huawei Watch. Samsung is making a lot of effort in promoting Tizen as an alternative to Android even though it currently runs Google’s mobile OS on majority of its smartphones. Tizen is mostly known to run on Samsung Gear S series of smartwatches, as well as its Galaxy Z smartphones.

Android Wear continues to be one of the dominant operating systems worldwide next to Apple’s watchOS. But with Huawei showing other manufacturers that Tizen is a viable option, that could change soon and it could impact the current state of the smartwatch market, according to 9To5Google.

Huawei Watch is more than a year old and now is a perfect time to announce its successor. Huawei will be announcing its new flagship smartphone, the Mate 9, later this fall. It’s possible that the company will also unveil the Huawei Watch 2 at the same time, as pointed out by Techno Buffalo.