Microsoft to Unveil Sport-Centric Smartwatch

BANGALORE: Tech giants Microsoft are soon coming out with a smartwatch that are focused on fitness, heart rate and health. The smartwatch will likely track a user’s position and route via GPS, measure movement with motion sensors and measure heart rate using optical sensors, similar to those found on other fitness device, reports Techradar.

Ben Wood, Chief of research at CCS Insight says, “Microsoft’s been in the watch space for a while, the Spot platform from 2004 was innovative and quite exciting at the time, and now it owns Nokia’s mobile device business, it makes perfect sense that Microsoft would have a team working on wearables,” reports Guardian. “With smart wearables, the wrist is the path of least resistance because it is the most widely accepted place to wear technology at the moment, due to the position of the watch being there,” Wood adds.

Microsoft's smartwatch patent though mainly focuses on biometric applications, it states that other functionality like music player, alarm clock, messaging and phone call apps may also be provided beyond the fitness app. The company is also planning to embrace other more recently developed applications, including its Bing search, Cortana voice assistant and Skype too.

“Microsoft has three options here. It could create something completely standalone, something that could work cross-platform with Android but optimized for Windows Phone, or something just for Windows Phone, but that would require something so disruptive it would entice users to switch platforms for the smartwatch which is a very, very tall order,” explains Wood.