Vendors are using smartphone components in lieu of optimised smart watch silicon, and “nobody has an optimal wearable peripheral solution yet”, according to ABI Research.

The company said that teardowns of a number of devices found the use of application processors originally targeted for smartphones and tablets in products including Samsung’s high-profile Galaxy Gear.

This means that devices suffer from “less than optimal” battery life and unnecessary cost/size that gets passed on to consumers.

Jim Mielke, VP of engineering for ABI Research, observed: “Our findings show the chipset suppliers are playing the ‘wait and see’ game before making investments into wearable peripherals.”

At CES 2014 earlier this year, several chip vendors – including Qualcomm and Intel – talked up the potential of wearable devices, a conversation that has continued since then.

But Mielke warned: “Some chipset vendors are claiming to have launched new chips optimised for wearable computing devices, like smart watches, but ABI Research has found that some of these claims are in fact misleading at best; basically just rebranding existing chipsets. Chipset vendors need to go the extra mile and create optimised chips, or they risk eroding the potential of the wearable device category.”