- Facebook is making a smartwatch that hopes to start selling in 2022, The Information reported Friday.
- According to the report, the watch will focus on health and messaging and work without a smartphone.
- Facebook’s watch may make it less dependent on Apple and Google, but also raise privacy concerns.
- Visit the Insider Business Department for more stories.
Facebook is further pushing into the hardware space by building a smartwatch that plans to sell to consumers only in 2022, The Information reported Friday.
The watch is likely to prioritize features that enable people to use Facebook’s 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.
Facebook’s watch will have access to the internet via a cellular connection, which means it does not need to be paired with a smartphone, and although it will initially use an open-source version of Google’s Android, Facebook will eventually want to its own operating system, The Information reported.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Facebook has further pushed hardware over the past year with its Oculus VR headset and Portal video streaming devices, hoping it can become less dependent on other dominant hardware manufacturers, though it has not yet made much progress.
Read more: Facebook’s collaborative tool Workplace is dwarfed by competitors, but loved by customers such as Starbucks and Walmart. Here are the biggest challenges ahead.
The intoxication of the company’s smartwatches will force it to take on ventures like Apple, which leads with about 55% of global smartwatch sales, Samsung and Google, acquiring Fitbit.
Facebook still hopes its smartwatch will make it less dependent on Apple and Google, whose operating systems run most of the world’s mobile devices.
But Facebook’s focus on connecting its smartwatch users to health programs – and likely collecting their data in the process – could be of concern to consumers, given the company’s shaky record of privacy.