LG's webOS smartwatch is scheduled for early 2016, says WSJ
Russell Brandom / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
LG first showed a working Open webOS smartwatch at CES 2015, complete with Audi car integration, and followed up by shipping the Watch Urbane LTE without Android Wear at all — a deliberate signal that LG wanted its own wearable platform rather than total dependence on Google. The WSJ report that a webOS watch is slated for early 2016 turns that signal into a roadmap: LG intends to run two parallel smartwatch lines, one on webOS and one on Android Wear.
That puts LG in the same camp as Samsung, which has long run its own Tizen watches alongside Android Wear devices — and it lands just as Google's Wear ecosystem is gaining premium partners like Tag Heuer.
First-order effects
- LG would be selling two competing smartwatch platforms under one brand, forcing its own marketing and retail channels to differentiate webOS watches from its Android Wear lineup like the Urbane.
- App developers targeting LG wearables face a fork: webOS apps for the new device versus Android Wear apps for the rest of LG's range.
Second-order effects
- Google loses exclusive pull over its largest Android Wear hardware maker, raising pressure on the platform to justify itself against in-house alternatives — a tension that later showed up when Google announced its own flagship OEM-branded smartwatches for early 2017.
- Audi-style car integration gives webOS watches a differentiation lever beyond the app store: automotive partnerships become the selling point where Android Wear's developer gravity doesn't apply.
Third-order effects
- The pattern ultimately reversed — by 2018 LG was back on Android Wear with the Watch W7, suggesting the dual-platform bet didn't sustain itself — but the episode points to a structural dynamic: every major wearable OEM periodically weighs a proprietary OS against licensing Google's, and those hedges shape how fragmented the wearable app market becomes.
- If more manufacturers follow LG and Samsung down the self-hosted path, wearable software consolidates around a few vertically integrated ecosystems rather than one cross-vendor platform.
The trend: Smartwatch makers keep oscillating between licensed platforms like Android Wear and their own operating systems, with each major OEM hedge reshaping where wearable developers and car integrations land.