Qualcomm had a surprise announcement at its Uplinq conference this week: a smart watch called Toq that connnects to Android devices. The Toq uses Qualcomm’s Mirasol display, a MEMS-based bistable that is low power and highly reflective. Like other smart watches, the Toq can display texts, emails, phone messages, and weather updates, and it comes with Bluetooth ear buds. The battery lasts from 3 to 5 days, and the Toq comes with a wireless charging system.
The Toq will retail for $300 starting in October, and Qualcomm says it will produce a limited number. The chipmaker’s goal is not to address the consumer electronics market; instead Qualcomm wants to demonstrate the functionality of its Mirasol display paired with a low power processor in hopes that other manufacturers will choose its solutions as they enter the market for wearable wireless devices.
Qualcomm chose to power the smart watch with a 200 MHz Cortex M3 processor instead of using one of its faster, more powerful Snapdragon chipsets. The company is of course the leading maker of ARM-based microprocessors for smartphones, but it also intends to be a force in the market for lower powered chips that connect devices to one another. As an adjunct to a smartphone or tablet, a smart watch like Toq, Pebble, or Samsung’s new Galaxy Gear can be seen as an M2M device, and this is an increasingly important market for Qualcomm.
The Toq watch is also a showcase for Qualcomm’s AllJoyn software platform, an open source software standard for connections among nearby devices. AllJoyn allows apps and devices to share controls, and to share content between screens. Qualcomm is promoting AllJoyn as a way for developers to ensure interoperability across device types and operating systems. The company envisions the software as an enabler for everything from home appliances to multi-player gaming systems.
Qualcomm has enjoyed a leading position in the market for smartphone processors and modems, but as smartphone sales level off in the developed world, the company is looking ahead to the so-called Internet of Things. The Toq is an effort to show both manufacturers and developers what the company has to offer.
Follow me on Twitter.
