- Facebook is making a smartwatch that it hopes to start selling in 2022, The Information reported on Friday.
- The watch will focus on health and messages and work without a smartphone, according to the report.
- Facebook’s clock may make you less dependent on Apple and Google, but it also raises privacy concerns.
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Facebook is advancing further in the hardware market by building a smartwatch that it plans to start selling to consumers in 2022, The Information reported on Friday.
The watch is likely to prioritize features that allow people to use the Facebook family of apps to send messages to each other, as well as integrations with health and fitness products from companies like Peloton, according to the report.
The Facebook watch will access the internet via a cellular connection, which means it will not need to be paired with a smartphone, and although it initially runs an open source version of Google’s Android, Facebook eventually wants to build its own operating system , o Reported information.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Facebook has made more progress in hardware in recent years with its Oculus VR headsets and Portal video streaming devices, hoping to become less dependent on other dominant hardware manufacturers, although it hasn’t made much progress yet.
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The company’s onslaught on smartwatches will force it to take over companies like Apple, which leads the group with around 55% of global smartwatch sales, Samsung and Google, which acquired Fitbit.
Still, Facebook hopes that its smartwatch will make it less dependent on Apple and Google, whose operating systems power most of the world’s mobile devices.
But Facebook’s focus on connecting its smartwatch users to healthcare apps – and probably collecting their data in the process – may raise concerns for consumers, given the company’s unstable record on data privacy.