The team behind webOS TV jumps to Pebble to design the next generation of smartwatches

The team behind webOS TV jumps to Pebble to design the next generation of smartwatches ,

Pebble is dead-serious about competing in the face of Android Wear and whatever Apple is presumably working on. To that end, the company has just announced that it has hired Itai Vonshak as head of product and UX and Liron Damir as head of design. Vonshak and Damir come to Pebble after working at LG, where they were instrumental in creating the user interface and design for webOS TV. Before that, they designed webOS for HP — though not everything they made there saw the light of day.

We spoke briefly with Vonshak, who says Pebble intends to focus heavily on a product-focused philosophy alongside a spirit of openness that's appealing to his webOS roots. Pebble's bet is that the wearable market won't shake out like the phone market has — with iOS and Android dominating while everybody else fights for table scraps. It's potentially an impossible task, but so far Pebble has (publicly, at least) welcomed the competition.