ASUS to launch smartwatches without Android Wear

ASUS made its way into the smartwatch ma rke t wit h t he ZenWatch in September last year. It joined the steadily increasing list of wearables running on Google's new platform, which is compatible only with Android smartphones.

A new report suggests that the Taiwanese manufacturer could be looking to decrease dependency on Google's wearable platform as it reportedly plans to launch a smartwatch with a new operating system.

Details on this OS are quite scarce, but it is likely that this wearable will support all major mobile platforms like Android, iOS as well as Windows Phone. Lack of cross platform support has been one of the biggest criticisms of Android Wear and even the Apple Watch.

So it 's good to see that ASUS wants to develop something for the masses and not just a portion of the smartphone audience. This wearable will supposedly run on a MediaTek chipset, which is still under development. This will also help ASUS save costs as MediaTek chips are substantially cheaper than Qualcomm's Snapdragon variants which are used in all Android Wear smartwatches.

Speaking on the occasion, country manager of ASUS, Peter Chang said that the ZenWatch will hit the Indian markets sometime in March for Rs 20,000. This is slightly more expensive than the Moto 360 which is currently retailing in the country for Rs 17,999 on Flipkart.

The pricing however is on par with the recently unveiled Sony SmartWatch 3 wearable. Along with more information about the smartwatch, ASUS is expected to announce a handful of new ZenFone handsets the upcoming MWC event in Barcelona.