Samsung says it’s done with Android Wear [Update]

Update: Samsung has gone on record that it has not made any adjustments to is wearable strategy. In a statement to MobileSyrup the company noted, “Samsung has not made any announcement concerning Android Wear and we have not changed our commitment to any of our platforms.”

While Android Wear 2.0 is set to add powerful new features to Google’s fledgling smartwatch operating system, Samsung, the world’s largest Android OEM, says it’s effectively done with the OS.

In an interview with Fast Company, multiple executives from the South Korean company told the magazine “no more Samsung Android Wear devices are in development or being planned.”

Moving forward, Samsung says it plans to release more wearables that take advantage of the open source Tizen operating system, the same OS that came pre-installed on the company’s latest smartwatch, the Gear S2. When asked for the reasoning behind the move, the same executives said Tizen is “far more battery-efficient than Android Wear”.

While Samsung is the company most closely associated with Tizen, a number of other notable electronics manufacturers like Fujitsu, Panasonic and Intel are members of the Tizen Association, the organization that decides the future of the OS. For Samsung, however, it makes sense to focus on Tizen; the company has already added the operating system to a number of other electronics it has made in the past, including a variety of TVs and refrigerators.

For Google, losing the most successful Android OEM is a tough blow, especially just as Android Wear is maturing into a compelling platform.

[source]Fast Company[/source][via]ArsTechnica[/via]