Following today’s news (11 August) that Samsung announced a Galaxy smartwatch with Google’s Wear smartwatch OS;

Anisha Bhatia, Senior Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers her view:

“Samsung’s new Google-enabled Galaxy Watch 4 series, unveiled at Samsung’s Unpacked event, will allow Samsung and Google a real shot at the wearables market that is expected to be worth $64bn by 2030.

“The Galaxy Watch 4 is the first device merging Google’s Wear OS and Samsung’s Tizen smartwatch platforms. This will allow increased developer and app support for Samsung and bring hardware expertise to Google, a win-win deal for both companies struggling to break Apple’s stranglehold in the smartwatch market. A partnership with Google also expands Samsung’s smartwatches to other Android phones reaching a portion of the non-Apple customer base.

“The new Galaxy Watch 4 was all about health, a major use case for smartwatches, with sleep tracking, blood oxygen monitoring and body composition measuring, hinting at Fitbit’s health framework in the joint smartwatch platform. With auto switching between the new Galaxy Buds 2 and Samsung’s line of smartphones, tablets and laptops, Samsung’s ecosystem message is clear and strong, taking on Apple’s hardware and services integration.”