Wimm Labs Acquired by Google Last Year, Just Confirmed
Does anyone remember the WIMM One that came out for developers last year? Well, it turns out that the company that makes it, WIMM Labs, was actually bought out by Google sometime about a year ago. The WIMM One was a smartwatch that never really made it out to the consumers, as the company slowly and quietly faded out last year, only having shipped to some developers. The WIMM One was actually sort of a module more than a smartwatch, similar to the 6th gen iPod Nano, that could be put in a watch strap that came with it. The company was fairly far in development with the smartwatch, but Google must have had quite a good offer for WIMM, because they took it, deleting their Facebook and Twitter accounts and leaving only this message on their website:
“During the summer of 2012, WIMM Labs entered into an exclusive, confidential relationship for our technology and ceased sales of the Developer Preview Kit (…) We’d like to thank all of our developers for their interest and willingness to experiment with our platform and look forward to exciting advances in the wearable market.”
This leaves us with a question, though; why did Google want to buy this company? Well, being that this technology has such high demand, it’s probably okay to assume that Google will join the race to the best smartwatch with Apple’s highly rumored iWatch and the Samsung Galaxy Gear coming out soon, and why not start out with a product already far in development? The WIMM One already had great specs and a running version of Android that Google can now use however they’d like.
Google said that some of WIMM Labs’ employees did get hired by Google after the merging, and that most of the senior management team still has WIMM Labs as their listed company on LinkedIn, though, some have recently updated it to Google.
What do you think of this acquisition? Do you think Google will come out with a smartwatch very soon, or will it be awhile before they release it? Make sure to tell us in the comments section below!