Larry Page drops a smartwatch reference in his last earnings call appearance

Google chief executive Larry Page spoke about the company’s performance and dropped an interesting mention of smartwatches at the earnings call.

"People increasingly have more than one device," he said as he transitioned to speak about the new multi-screen world. "Screens are proliferating in the home as well as wearables screens like watches and Google Glass."

This obviously underlines how important the Google CEO thinks smartwatches are and some are taking this as a hint towards a possible Google-made smartwatch. It’s hard to see any direct relation to a simple mention of watches and an actual product launch, but we have indeed heard rumors coming from two different sources that Google is preparing to release its Gem smartwatch and might release it as a surprise along with the Nexus 5 and Android KitKat.

Google has not yet revealed an official announcement date, but speculations have recently circled around October 28th.

Larry Page also said this was his last appearance on a Google earnings call as CFO Patrick Pichette and CBO Nikesh Arora are taking over the task of handling calls.

The Google chief executive praised the focus and velocity of execution with various teams and products. He mentioned the great sales of the Chromecast streamer and Motorola’s great transformation.

One extremely interesting insight came when Page spoke about Android, revealing how hesitant Google was about developing the mobile operating system that is the world’s largest now:

“When Android was still a skunkworks project, I used to feel kind of guilty visiting the team. We were a search company and building a new operating system wasn’t an obvious move to most people. Turns out that was a lot of misplaced guilt! Over 1 billion Android devices have now been activated worldwide -- and 1.5M devices are lit up every day.”

source: Larry Page