March 19, 2014
Today both LG and Google announced their upcoming smart watch: LG’s is called G Watch with a rectangle flat display. Google’s is called Moto360 made by its Motorola Mobility division, (which will be acquired by Lenovo in the near future, but the acquirement is still not finalized yet.)
Figure: LG’s G watch and Google’s Moto360
Source: LG, Google
The Moto360 has a round flat display, which is unique. On the other side, LG’s G Watch has a common rectangle flat display. LG indicated they’ll announce the spec in a few months. As we covered before, LG has released G Flex mobile phone with a plastic curved AMOLED display in 2013. The fact that LG didn’t use a curved display on the watch is very strange, this indicated their curved AMOLED display capacity is still small, or yield is still low.
At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014, Samsung announced its newest wearable device: Gear Fit. It has a 1.84” super AMOLED display, with 432X128 pixel format. (Please note, some website said it is 1.4”, which is wrong).
Figure: Samsung Gear Fit with curved display
Source: Samsung, 2014
Samsung claims the Gear Fit is “the industry’s first curved, super AMOLED wearable device”. I think that is correct.
As Touch Display Research reported in our “Flexible and curved display technologies and market forecast” report, we believe flexible and curved displays are more ergonomic for the wrist, and larger-sized flexible displays could fit better and show more information. The Gear Fit is what a smart watch should look like.
Touch Display Research forecasts 30 million units flexible and curved displays will be shipped for smart watch application by 2023.
Thanks for reading,
Jennifer and team