“I am always confused as to what smartwatches are for when we have smartphones,”  he told Huawei’s 2017 Global Analyst Summit event in China and said he would never wear one.

Huawei recently released the Watch 2, an Android Wear 2.0-based update to its smartwatch line.

It was not like it was a passing comment. He even dragged down the company's wearable development team.

"When the smartwatch team in Huawei presents their ideas to me with great excitement, I keep reminding them to consider whether there are tangible needs [for these products] in the market," he continued.

To be fair, Xu’s comments are fair enough. The only company which makes much dosh out of smartwatches is Apple and its fanboys will buy anything the company makes. Wearable companies are stumbling, most notably Fitbit, which laid off six percent of its staff to start the year and has faced major roadblocks in the development of its first true smartwatch.

Xu is right -  the only way forward is to actually come up with a product that does something useful. Huawei might put out some really useful wearable tech — or walk away from the daft idea.