Yesterday Google unveiled Android Wear, an operating system targeted squarely at the emerging wearable devices market. Initially Android Wear will be available for Smartwatches, but eventually be made available to all types of wearable devices. A developer preview of the OS was released yesterday alongside the announcement.

Google said smartwatches using Android Wear would be available later this year, and that it was working with device vendors (it referenced ASUS, HTC, LG, Motorola, and Samsung), semiconductor suppliers (it referenced Broadcom, Imagination, Intel, MediaTek and Qualcomm), and fashion brand Fossil.

Two smartwatch announcements coincided with the Android Wear announcement, from LG and Motorola. LG announced the G Watch which will ship in Q2 2014. Motorola announced the Moto 360, which will be available as summer 2014, initially in the U.S. No pricing was disclosed for either model.

According to our Wearable Device Ecosystems (WDE) service, the smartwatch segment of the wearable device market will undergo significant growth in a very short period of time, and we expect growth of over 350% in 2014 alone. We forecast the global wearables market to quadruple by 2018.

LG G Watch:

Moto 360: