Meta Watch, a company that’s been working with Fossil to bring a Bluetooth enabled watch to market, has just announced that they’ve been acquired by “a team of investors led by Juha Pinomaa, former President of Suunto and a former Nokia executive”. The company will be based out of Dallas, Texas, but will also have an office in Espoo, Finland, which is where Nokia’s gloabl headquarters are located. Starting this month, for $200, you’ll be able to pick up a Meta Watch development system so you can start bringing your ideas of what a connected watch should deliver to life. Count us as highly interested in where the future of this product category goes. There are many occasions where we might not hear our devices ring or simply have too much happening in front of us to warrant taking our phone out. Having a small display on our wrist scrolling text messages or alerting us that a friend is nearby is something that will definitely make us want to wear a watch again.
“Over the next 10 years billions of people will carry smart phones changing how consumers live and creating new opportunities and markets for connected watches and other wearable devices. Acquiring Meta Watch not only gives us a head start in this emerging growth market, it brings us the industry’s most experienced management team who have been designing and shipping connected watches since 2006,” said Juha Pinomaa, Chairman of Meta Watch.
When Apple release the new iPod nano, the one with a multitouch screen, the first thing people tried to do with it was strap it to their wrist. Imagine if a whole host of consumer electronic companies, who have no previous experience (read: baggage) with watch design, started pumping out a whole portfolio of wrist accessories?
iClock, Galaxy Timex, BlackBerry Sundial, they’re coming folks.
[Via: TechCrunch]
[Image via: Engadget]