While it’s almost like something from the past, Motorola has been an important part of the history of the mobile industry that goes beyond just smartphones. Despite its ridiculously “flat tire” design, the Moto 360 was the first smartwatch to attempt to have a rounded body instead of the lightest square chassis. Like other smartphone makers, Motorola has moved back from making wearables but it looks like it is now making a comeback with not one but three smartwatches this year.
To be clear, the information comes not directly from Motorola itself but from slides shared to investors by the capital pool company CE Brands and the direct-to-user partner company eBuyNow. It can be recalled that last year’s Moto 360 revival was done by eBuyNow and this suggests that all three smartwatches with the Moto logo will be the same. Nonetheless, most buyers will not know the best business details and will assume that they are all manufactured and owned by Motorola anyway.
On their own, all three Moto smartwatches could be interesting. The Moto G Smartwatch, which appears to be slated for release in June, looks similar to your usual round smartwatch with two buttons on one side. With the “Moto G” brand, it could be marketed as a mid-range app, perhaps one running an older version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear chipset.
In July, CE Brands and eBuyNow will introduce the Moto Watch and the Moto One. The latter is similar to an Apple Watch, which may or may not work in his favor. The Moto One name, on the other hand, suggests that this will hold closer to the pure experience of Wear OS, just like the Motorola One and Android One phones.
It’s interesting to see a resurgence of interest in Wew OS smartwatches among smartphone OEMs, at least if the rumor about the Samsung Wear OS variant is true. Perhaps more interesting is that Motorola seems to be loading more of their brand to other companies, perhaps starting on the road to a licensing business similar to what BlackBerry did years ago.