Apple Watch 7 targeted as Facebook's plans for radical new smartwatch leak

Just when it looked like the Apple Watch 7 was going to run away with the best smartwatch market, with the incoming new wearable reported to deliver advanced blood glucose monitoring functionality, comes news that Facebook is plotting a radical new  Apple Watch rival of its very own.

As reported by The Information, Facebook is currently working on a new smartwatch which, worryingly for the Apple Watch 7, has a "focus on messaging, health" and "will let wearers send messages using Facebook's services and also offer health and fitness features".

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The leaked information comes courtesy of "people with direct knowledge of the device", so the report is still very much in rumor territory. However, an Apple Watch competitor from Facebook does make sense in light of the firm's expansion into non-smartphone devices such as its Oculus virtual reality headsets.

Indeed, as the report notes, the whole aim with the Facebook smartwatch is to enable quick digital interactions with people that traditionally would of been handled on a smartphone. The Facebook smartwatch, like the Apple Watch, will enable these interactions via a cellular network connection.

Here at T3 we think that a wearable for Facebook on paper makes perfect sense, as there is no doubting that much of the social media platform's functionality could be used through such a device, and that the wearables market continues to grow. However, as we've seen from the huge bias in smartwatch sales over the past five years, with Apple Watch outselling every other brand significantly, whether or not people could be lured over to a Facebook piece of hardware remains unclear.

Maybe if the Facebook smartwatch retailed at a significantly lower price point to the Apple Watch, while still offering the same messaging/social media/health tracking features, then it would attract younger owners who could not spend hundreds of dollars on a wearable. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until 2022 to find out if this occurs, as that is when the Facebook smartwatch is reported to be hitting the market.

As to what the Facebook smartwatch will look like, right now nothing is known, however here at T3 we think that, considering the Apple Watch is by far the most popular smartwatch on the planet, it will look similar to it. As for the Apple Watch Series 7, our best look yet at how it could look comes from this recently released concept design video.

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