Android Wear has changed the smartwatch landscape, from a bunch of unorganised interfaces all made custom by the manufacturer, Google wants to bring all the manufacturers together under one unified design and operating system.
Sony appears to not be buying Android Wear at the moment, happy to continue using their own custom interface for better or worse. We are not sure how many Sony Smartwatch units they have sold in the past year, but they feel confident in the decision.
The Sony Smartwatch is awfully plain and boring, running a custom OS that does not run Android apps natively, not much developer work has been done to offer third party applications on the two devices and we doubt this is going to change anytime soon.
Sony does not have any plans to release a circular display smartwatch and we believe this is where the money is at when it comes to smartwatches, confirmed by the massive amounts of hype surrounding the Moto 360 and Android Wear’s ability to offer circle displays.
This may just be Sony not wanting to give up two years of work on their custom OS and smartwatches and hop on the Android Wear bandwagon before it even starts moving, something we can respect, even if Android Wear looks like the most important thing to happen to wearables.
Sony’s Android smartphones have not been the best sellers and it may have left the Japanese company in bitter taste of Google’s free and open operating system, pushing them onto their own custom brand of software.
Still, Android Wear seems like the way forward for manufacturers who are not Apple. Pebble may stick with their own custom OS, considering they now even have an apps store for developers to try out their new applications for wearables and enjoy the E-Ink experience.
