The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Bits blog recently reported that Apple may be in the development stages of a smart watch for the consumer market. Sources haven’t been announced, but reports state that the company is testing “wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass” operating on Apple’s iOS platform.

According to The New York Times, Apple’s smart watch would set itself apart from competitors with a specialized, bendable Corning glass known as Willow Glass.

Pete Bocko, the C.T.O. of Corning Glass Technologies, told the New York Times, that “you can certainly make [WIllow Glass] wrap around a cylindrical object and that could be someone’s wrist. Right now, if I tried to make something that looked like a watch, that could be done using this flexible glass.”   

Speculation of an Apple smart watch has surfaced before. The last rumor came in December of last year from Tech.163, a Chinese gadget news site, and reported that Apple was working on a smart watch capable of connecting via Bluetooth to other iOS devices. The report also stated that Apple and Intel were working together to create a watch with a 1.5-inch PMOLED display with ITO-coated glass.

The International CES in Las Vegas this past January showcased a few smart watches that made big headlines and developed quite a bit of buzz in the tech blogosphere. Among them, the Cookoo, the I’m Watch, the Pebble, and the Martian. The Pebble began shipping devices in January after having raised over $10 million on Kickstarter.

Sony also recently launched its own smart watch dubbed, creatively, the Smart Watch. Sony’s Smart Watch syncs with Xperia smartphones and delivers text messages, emails, and social network activity to the devices 1.3-inch OLED screen.

It isn’t much of a stretch to assume that Apple would be working on a smart watch with the current consumer market showing more interest in the devices. Wristbands have already been developed to work with Apple’s iPod nano (6th generation), but these are hardly competition to the devices engineered specifically as smart watches.

So is Apple really working on a smart watch? Can we expect an iWatch to be unveiled during the next Apple Special Event?

[Image via Flickr/sultancillo]