In a recent scoop that was picked up by GigaOm, a major transaction secretly took place last year around summer time between Google and WIMM Labs. WIMM Labs was a producer of Android-powered smartwatches, with its first watch launching back in 2011 called, WIMM One. The watch was very developer centric, and when it hit the market, it apparently did not gain too much traction. Although, if a product is good enough for Google to notice, then you could be sitting on a goldmine.
Here is an excerpt taken from their site, smartwatch.com.
During the summer of 2012, WIMM Labs entered into an exclusive, confidential relationship for our technology.
The recent rumors of Google creating their own smartwatch have been getting more credible over the past few months, with recent reports stating that the Android team would be the lead developers for the device. To also lend credibility are recent patent filings and things of that nature that we have discussed before. According to GigaOm, WIMM Labs’ team of developers went on after the acquisition to work for Google, and have been working closely with the Android team to help produce Google’s smartwatch.
All of this lends more credit to the idea that when Google does finally announce a smartwatch, we can rest assured it won’t be some half-baked science fair project. Google has taken their time and have spent lots of resources on this project, with GigaOm even speculating that Andy Rubin could have some part in it. As for Rubin’s involvement, we find it far stretched, but anything is possible these days.
Via: GigaOm