“Microsoft Corp. is working on designs for a touch-enabled watch device, executives at suppliers said, potentially joining rivals like Apple Inc. in working on a new class of computing products,” Lorraine Luk and Shira Ovide report for The Wall Street Journal. “Earlier this year, Microsoft asked suppliers in Asia to ship components for a potential watch-style device, the executives said. One executive said he met with Microsoft’s research and development team at the software company’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters. But it’s unclear whether Microsoft will opt to move ahead with the watch, they said.”
Luk and Ovide, “Some investors and big technology companies are betting on a boom in wearable, computerized devices built around the growing power and slimming size of sensors that can detect body temperature, geographic location and voice commands of people on the go. Some of the new wearable gadgets, like Nike Inc.’s FuelBand, measure physical activity, while others are intended to supplement functions of a smartphone, such as receiving text messages, taking photos or checking the weather. Apple has also experimented with designs for a wristwatch-style device, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year.”
“Microsoft a decade ago unveiled a ‘Smart Watch’ powered by the company’s software. For a subscription fee, Smart Watch wearers could have news headlines, sports scores and instant messages beamed over FM radio to their wrists. But sales stopped in 2008,” Luk and Ovide report. “Microsoft also is continuing to test its own smartphone, although it isn’t clear whether it will bring such a device to market, component suppliers said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft already tried this and failed. Just like they did with tablets. Just like they did with smartphones. Microsoft’s share in each market is a rounding error.
The super-small market share guy should take a break with their “research” and just wait for Apple to show them what to do for the umpteenth time.
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Can’t wait to use Office on a smart watch.
Good idea. I need to get my “real” work done.
If you’re using “Microsoft Office” on a “smart” watch…
One of the two is not what it seems.
Oh… joy. Now I can try to figure out what “
” rel=”nofollow”>0028:C11B3ADC” o’clock on my wrist means.
I’d just as soon watch an hour-long “It’s a Tyne Daly Christmas” special.
Exactly. MS’s analysis is that their Smart Watch failed because it lacked office, a physical keyboard, and a 5 lb battery.
It wasn’t the $10 a month subscription to get info on a LCD (think old school grey and black).
Let’s see, there was the ‘blue screen of death’, then the ‘black screen of death’… Hmm, wonder what ‘color screen of death’ the MS watch will have?!
Microsoft Deathwatch.
I’ll send an old wrinkled MS Death Watch wrapped in an oyster box to Minka Kelly with a note that says, “This is what your vajayjay will turn out like if you don’t let me roar my 7.9″ iPad mini in there.”
Minka is hot but this is just creepy.
Give him a break, we were all 14 once, it’s just his hormones talking. On second thoughts, you’re right it’s just creepy.
You have to be smart to design a Smartwatch.
Than’s Microsoft’s beginning FAIL before they even start the project.
Look! Microsoft’s smartwatch has already been released:
http://craziestgadgets.com/2008/10/22/robot-dance-monkey-watch/
More like this:
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=390519041865
Too freakin’ funny. Dancing Monkey part is the best. Just put Ballmer’s sweaty body under the Monkey Head and there you go.
Must be “time” to start up your copiers Redmond.
More Spot watches?
Knowing how fanatical Microsoft is about Windows everywhere, I feel certain they’re going to try and stuff Windows 8 on a smartwatch. And the Windows fanboyz will be bragging about how they can multi-task on their watches.
Redmond rounding errors – aren’t they getting tired of this and the humiliation of being soundly & routinely rejected as the world’s most uncool technology company?? Can you imagine any scenario of people proudly wearing Microsoft wrist devices actually in public? “This is not the ecosystem you bought into, these are not the cool devices you’re looking for, move along…”
BSOD will be a color change option.
Kim Jung Un will order one.
It had better work though.
It’ll be a big-assed watch.
Because Microsoft only successfully works with Intel processors this watch will fail.
The rest of the world knows that a wrist watch must use an ARM processor.
They will be designed to resemble handcuffs because only masochists are likely to buy them.
MS Zune Watch will have a clock that runs in reverse, a calendar that’s a decade behind & a blue screen of death. The all new Deathwatch!