Barcelona
Chinese wearable start-up Omate has teamed up with Nanoblock to offer a parents a way to monitor remotely.
The Omate x Nanoblock, a new smartwatch for kids, is equipped with secure and global connectivity, so parents can keep track of and be in touch with their kids in real-time.
Laurent Le Pen, Founder and CEO of Omate, told Gulf News that the kids smartwatch is a big segment of the company’s sales in Asia, but it is still a niche segment in other parts of the world.
“The watch is connected to a smartphone app and it can locate your child anywhere. The kid can activate the emergency feature and share the GPS location to its parents. It brings peace of mind to the parents,” he said.
The watch comes with an integrated SIM and enabled by Tata Communications Move — IoT Connect platform. It works straight out of the box in any country without going to the telecom operator to activate the SIM card.
“Parents don’t need to worry about the connectivity and the roaming costs,” said Anthony Bartolo, Chief Product Officer for Collaboration, Mobility and IoT at Tata Communications. “All are being taken care of with the platform. All the innovation happens at the device level and it can be either a smartphone, wearable or connected vehicles. We have the taken the complexity of cross-border mobility and made it a flexible platform,” he said.
The product will be available in June in North America and Europe and in the Middle East by September, just in time for the back-to-school season. It is priced at $179 and that includes the watch and one-year 3G data plan.
He said that the Japanese company Nanoblock designed the Lego-style watch to make it more fun for the kids to wear. The watch offers SOS alerts, video chatting, two-way voice, location tracking, pedometer and front-facing camera.
