Huawei, Oviphone unveil world’s first IoT watch

Huawei in collaboration with Oviphone claims to have invented the world’s first NB-IoT watch.

In a market where smart wearables are increasing in terms of dominance, Huawei along with Oviphone have invented the world’s first NB-IoT watch.

Oviphone claims that the NB-IoT small chipsets that are installed in their latest smart watch will allow the device’s design to be more compact.

Moreover, the former is also undertaken as both the company’s joint effort to power the Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology. LPWA is a wireless wide area network technology that is specialized for interconnecting devices with low-bandwidth connectivity, focusing on range and power efficiency.

The smartwatch will commercially be available by early 2017 and will support IoT applications with low bandwidth requirements.

Oviphone CEO Jack Yu is of the opinion that LPWA is a suitable technology to power werables and that ‘the relatively low take-up of smartwatches so far is because they are inconvenient, with too high power consumption and a reliance on being connected to a smartphone.’ A smartphone has most of the function of a watch and measurement accuracy of a smartphone is too low, he added.

Yu also said that NB-IoT has the potential to power other wearable devices as well including those that serve the function of tracking pets or delivering items.

Information regarding the launch, specifications and availability of the NB-IoT enabled smartwatch are yet to be released. However, a live demo is available in Huawei’s Shanghai Open Lab.