Will the smartphone stop ruling the small screens to instead become the behind the scenes "hub" powering the next generation of wearable computers?
According to the New York Times, both Google and Apple are secretly working on wearable devices-- with the aim to boost the smartphone business, of course.
Google is reportedly hiring specialists from Nokia, Apple and engineering universities as researchers at the secret Google X labs work on wearable peripherals sending and receiving data to and from Android handsets.
Meanwhile NYTimes sources say Apple is prototyping wearable devices-- such as a curved-glass voice controlled (Via Siri) iPod wrapping around the wrist.
There is no mention of when such devices will hit the market (if at all), but some researcher speculate wearable computing will even appear as glasses with built-in displays within the next 10 years.
In the meantime, it is more than realistic to expect the occasional Dick Tracy-style wristwatch computer to grace the market in the (very) near future.
