Young Hee, an executive vice president of Samsung's mobile business, told Bloomberg News that the company had been working on a watch for a long time.
It was her needling follow-up, "Are we still working on a watch?" that prompted the eyeball threat.
Up in the eaves of the villa, across from an engraver working on a watch face with an erotic theme, engineers sat at computer design workstations.
Now, if Apple releases a larger iPhone, for example, Samsung may argue: "Who's the copycat now?" Samsung also has plans to sell a smart watch, while Apple is said to be working on a watch of its own.
Apple was working on a watch before Google revealed its smartglasses, but even so it was clear to Ive that the face "was the wrong place" and that the wrist was "the obvious and right place" for a notification device.
Mr. McFetridge created an animated graphics campaign in 2001 for the ESPN Winter X Games, a competition thick with snowboarding events, and is working on a watch and a shoe for Nike.
Despite the technical challenges, he said, the company is planning to do a series of jade watches using imperial green jade and white jade, which he believes will particularly appeal to a North Asian clientele: "We're working on a watch with a big diameter imperial jade at 38 millimeters.
The article offered no proof that Apple was working on a watch – or that the device that was rapidly christened an iWatch was even a timekeeper (could iWatch be the name of the long awaited TV from Apple?).
The "wearable computing" age is upon us, and it's been widely reported that Apple was working on a watch, therefore many assumed that Google was working on a similar device to keep up.
