Samsung could be launching its follow-up to the Gear S2 smartwatch as soon as this month, with invitations sent by Samsung a good indication of the impending arrival of the Gear S3.
The invites in question relate to an event set to be held on Wednesday 31 August at 6pm, ahead of the IFA trade show in Berlin. The invite encourages invitees to ‘Talk about 3” with an image of a round clock face.
Bolstering the argument of a Gear S3 launch, Samsung’s Gear 2 smartwatch launched in September 2015 at the same event. However, multiple versions of the new smartwatch could be a possibility, with Samsung also sending out invites for a second IFA event on September 1 August.
Although both invites detail the same design, the watch hand detail differs in the invites. Although this could be a mistake, it could possibly point to another version of the S3 – a good bet seeing as how the Gear S2 also comes in two variants.
According to IDC, smartwatch shipments were down in the second quarter of 2016, falling from 5.1 million in last year’s quarter to 3.5 million this quarter. This marks the first drop of its kind, a sizeable 32% decline. Although the drop was largely blamed on Apple, Samsung, LG and Garmin only managed modest gains or remained flat.
