Trademark Filing Points to "Samsung Galaxy Gear" Smartwatch

A post on Engadget today points the way to a Dutch tech site called Galaxy Club, which has discovered a US trademark filing that seems to prove Samsung is readying its own entrant into the suddenly crowded-seeming smartwatch category called the Samsung Galaxy Gear. Hooray?

Here’s the official identification of what the Samsung Galaxy Gear will be from the trademark documents, which was filed on July 29 of this year:

“Wearable digital electronic devices in the form of a wristwatch, wrist band or bangle capable of providing access to the Internet and for sending and receiving phone calls, electronic mails and messages; wearable electronic handheld devices in the form of a wristwatch, wrist band or bangle for the wireless receipt, storage and/or transmission of data and messages and for keeping track of or managing personal information; smart phones; tablet computers; portable computers.”

Man, I really hope they brand it as a “smartbangle.” At the very least, they’d have a corner on the smartbangle market.

The Engadget post also points out an earlier trademark filing from a month earlier on June 27, for simply “Samsung Gear.” That one, however, seems a lot more general in terms of what it’ll cover, including “computer software for encoding and decoding of voice and audio signals,” “audio amplifiers,” USB flash memory drives,” and much, much more. In short, it seems that “Gear” might be some kind of new brand for Samsung’s tech products, while the “Galaxy Gear” may be specific to the smartwatch category. Maybe?

To be honest, it doesn’t much matter what our guesses are regarding these latest filings. Samsung will have a smartwatch soon. The company’s executive vice president Lee Young Hee said as much a few months ago:

“We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long. We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them.”

It makes perfect sense considering the many, many reports we’ve been hearing about smartwatches from rival tech companies like Sony’s already announced SmartWatch 2, the rumors about Microsoft’s Surface Smartwatch, and, of course, Apple’s own long-rumored iWatch. It seems that the tech world has latched onto its newest fad, and it wouldn’t be a party without Samsung. After all, as Apple’s largest rival in the mobile space. Anything that Apple does, Samsung will try to do, too—but less expensive, and conceivably (according to your preference) better.

But then, the question still remains: does anyone actually want a smartwatch? Will this category be the newest, hottest thing? Or will it be a smaller, wrist-worn phablet–the device that truly has no reason for existing? I suppose we’ll find out in the coming year…