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The South Korean tech giant's official blog post
showed images of smartwatch with a round face - which would be a
first for Samsung - and naming several partners, including Baidu
Inc, Yelp Inc and CNN.
Samsung also said it would release a wearable software
development kit for third-party developers ahead of the launch.
The blog post came as the Apple Watch went on sale without the
fanfare typical of the U.S. firm's major product rollouts.
Apple's offering is still expected to sell much better than any
rival products to date. Researcher IHS expects shipments of more
than 19 million Apple Watches this year, more than five times
the number of all smartwatches shipped globally in 2014.
Samsung has launched six smartwatches since 2013 to build an
early lead in the nascent market, but sales have been modest.
IHS estimates that Samsung accounted for nearly 1 million of the
3.6 million smartwatches shipped globally last year.
The South Korean firm gave no other details on the new Gear
smartwatch, such as when it may start selling, though the head
of the firm's mobile business said earlier in April that Samsung
would launch products in the near future.
(Reporting by Se Young Lee; Editing by Tony Munroe and
Christopher Cushing)
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