Casio (Photo : Reuters)
Electronics manufacturing company Casio recently announced that it will join the smartwatch market in March 2016. The company, manufacturer of the G-Shock series of timepieces, said that it will release a smartwatch that aims to deliver top notch durability and comfort.
Casio Chief Executive Officer Kazuhiro Kashio told The Wall Street Journal, "At times we just showed off quirky features and then pulled those products when they didn't sell well. Now, we are trying to bring our smartwatch to a level of watch perfection."
Casio also plans to release a smartwatch that is significantly affordable compared to the ones currently available in the market. The cheapest Apple Watch sells for $349 and Casio wants to deliver a smartwatch well beyond that price range.
According to Tech Times, Casio's smartwatch will fetch an introductory price of $400. The company also plans to throw in several new features that are not offered by smartwatches currently available in the market.
In terms of functionality and design, Kashio said that the Casio smartwatch will be made for men, primarily those who are involved in outdoor sports.
Many industry analysts said that Casio may top the smartwatch market despite a number of competitors. The company has to come up with a way to solve many of current smartwatches' defects.
Some of the factors pointed that could be critical to Casio's success were the improvement of battery life and support for cellular connectivity. Currently, only smartwatches running on the Android Wear platform has Wi-Fi connectivity. Additionally, there are only a handful of the current smartwatches support 3G or 4G LTE connectivity.
