Huawei is considering offering a smartwatch powered by the Tizen operating system, according to reports originating from South Korea.

So far, Tizen’s presence in the wearables space has been confined to Samsung devices, although the consumer electronics giant has pressed on with several generations of products using the OS. The company is also using it in smart TVs, and has dabbled with it in the smartphone market.

Apparently, the Chinese vendor – which announced its first smartwatch at Mobile World Congress 2015 – is looking beyond Android Wear because Google has “not been very collaborative” in development. The customisation options presented are also limited.

But the news also aligns with delays to the next generation of Android Wear, which will not now reach devices until early in 2017.

Samsung, however, reportedly said that it has had no contact from Huawei about such a product. While the companies are increasingly close competitors, it would make some sense from an ecosystem point of view for there to be a collaboration on the smartwatch app ecosystem, for example, where both could benefit.

Huawei was previously inked with the development of its own smartphone OS.