Facebook is reportedly building a smartwatch and wants to sell it to you starting next year in exchange for your health data
Facebook is making a smartwatch it hopes to start selling in 2022, The Information reported Friday.
The watch will focus on health and messaging and work without a smartphone, according to the report.
Facebook's watch could make it less dependent on Apple and Google but also raise privacy concerns.
Facebook is pushing further into the hardware space by building a smartwatch that it plans to start selling to consumers sometime in 2022, The Information reported on Friday.
The watch will likely prioritize features that let people use Facebook's family of apps to send messages to each other, a well as integrations with health and fitness products from companies like Peloton, according to the report.
Facebook's watch will access the internet via a cellular connection, meaning it won't need to be paired with a smartphone, and while it will initially run an open-source version of Google's Android, Facebook wants to eventually build its own operating system, The Information reported.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Facebook has pushed further into hardware in recent years with its Oculus VR headsets and Portal video-streaming devices, hoping it can become less dependent on other dominant hardware makers, though it hasn't made much progress yet.
The company's foray into smartwatches will force it to take on companies like Apple, which leads the pack with around 55% of global smartwatch sales, Samsung, and Google, which acquired Fitbit.
Still, Facebook hopes its smartwatch will make it less dependent on Apple and Google, whose operating systems power most of the world's mobile devices.
But Facebook's focus on connecting its smartwatch users to health apps - and likely collecting their data in the process - could raise concerns for consumers given the company's shaky record on data privacy.
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