The boss of Chinese tech giant Huawei has said he doesn’t see the point in smartwatches despite the company recently launching new timepieces in the market.
According to Forbes, Eric Xu was responding to a question during the company’s analyst summit in Shenzhen, at which he was asked if smartphones are dying because of wearable tech.
“I’m not a man who wears watches, and I’ve never been optimistic about this market,” he is said to have replied. “In fact, I’ve never figured out why we need to wear smartwatches when everything we need is on our phones.”
Mr Xu is one of three rotating CEOs at Huawei, each of whom serves for six months at a time.
Ben Wood, analyst at tech consultancy CCS Insight, told the BBC his comments do not come as a surprise. “Smartwatches are a solution looking for a problem, rather than being a game-changer,” he said.
Mr Wood also praised Mr Xu’s honesty: “It’s one view of just one of the three chief executives at Huawei,” he noted.
Huawei has just released a new range of smartwatches, including the ‘Huawei Watch 2 Classic’, into the market after initially unveiling them at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.
