Smartwatches have been growing in popularity lately thanks to the devices like Metawatch and the Pebble, among others. So far there haven't been a ton of major mobile manufacturers that've entered the category, with Sony being one of the few, but today a new report has claimed that the smartwatch party could get some guests from Cupertino in the future. According to sources speaking to The New York Times' Nick Bilton, Apple is currently "experimenting" with a device that's similar to a watch and is made of curved glass. Details on the product are still fairly light, but two of the tipsters claim that it would run iOS.
The report also notes that Corning, the makers of the Gorilla Glass product that's used on many mobile devices today, has a bendable glass product dubbed Willow Glass. Corning CTO Pete Bocko told the NYT that his company has been working on the flexible glass for over a decade and that it could "certainly" be wrapped around a cylindrical object like a wrist. "Right now, if I tried to make something that looked like a watch, that could be done using this flexible glass," Bocko explained.
With the recent success of the Pebble watch on Kickstarter, it seems that smartwatch devices are beginning to gain some attention from the mainstream, and that could continue to grow as more Pebbles begin to actually ship out to backers and as other products enter the space. While Apple has yet to officially make a watch of its own, many people have taken it upon themselves to create their own by strapping a sixth-generation iPod nano to a watch band and using the device's built-in clock to tell time.
As the smartwatch category continues to grow, it makes sense that Apple would at least be looking to creating a wearable product like a watch. Whether or not such a device will ever be released by Apple is something else entirely, but it'd certainly be interesting to see what kind of smartwatch hardware that the Cupertino firm would be able to put together. How many of you are interested in smartwatch devices or already have one strapped to your wrist?
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