Mobvoi is not a name you've probably heard of, though the company's Ticwatch 2 has received an enormous amount of press as of late due to its cheap price, excellent design, and flagship-worthy specs. The Ticwatch 2 consists of a metal bezel, heart rate monitor, in-built GPS, and its bright, 400 x 400 AMOLED display which makes the viewing experience beautiful. All of these great specs in a premium device for just $200 has many consumers taking notice of what would otherwise be just another smartwatch on the market.
The Ticwatch 2 is not only a commendable smartwatch, but its manufacturer, Mobvoi, is commendable, too. See, what few know is that Mobvoi, a four-year startup consisting of a few ex-Googlers, is backed by Alphabet, the once Google-turned-conglomerate that we see before us. Mobvoi has been made an official Chinese partner for Android Wear earlier this year, indicating that Mobvoi, with Google's backing in China, is set to become a major player in the Chinese market. "The Google Now for China" is what the company calls itself.
Mobvoi is set to release its Ticwatch 2 for the US market this September, just in time to square off with Samsung's Gear S3 and the Apple Watch 2 (expected to sell 2 million units each month in the next year), with Mobvoi predicting it could sell 50,000 units of the Ticwatch 2 in the US later this year. There seems to be some market for Mobvoi, considering that there are Samsung Gear S2 users out there who don't care for S-Voice and would happily seek an alternative (something along the lines of Google Assistant) if possible while maintaining a sleek and premium form factor. And yet, at the same time, it'll have a hard road to travel in order to outsell the Apple Watch. Android Wear allows for a considerable amount of information to be processed on Android Wear watches that are paired with an iPhone, but experience shows that not everything works on Android Wear as it does on Apple's WatchOS.
The official word on the Mobvoi Ticwatch 2 is that the price should be "south of $200," with some whispers that early backers need only pay $100 to pick up the smartwatch. If anything changes, or a new update arises, we'll be back to let you know.
