Bloomberg’s turn on Apple’s iWatch: ‘Over 100 product designers and growing working on wristwatch-like device’

iWatch concept via GottabeMobile

After the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal took their turns this weekend relaying little tidbits about the Apple watch program, it is now Bloomberg’s turn. In a story this evening, the financial news site posted that Apple had 100 product designers working on the iWatch program and it is growing.

Apple Inc. has a team of about 100 product designers working on a wristwatch-like device that may perform some of the computing tasks now handled by the iPhone and iPad, two people familiar with the company’s plans said.

The team, which has grown in the past year, includes managers, members of the marketing group and software and hardware engineers who previously worked on the iPhone and iPad, said the people, who asked not to be named because the plans are private. The team’s size suggests Apple is beyond the experimentation phase in its development, said the people.

There is lots of both real and speculative information about Apple’s iWatch project floating around at the moment. So much so that it sounds like we’re ramping up to a launch in the coming year or so.

Bloomberg dropped two names of managers on the watch team: James Foster and Achim Pantfoerder. Interestingly, we understand that Foster reports to Bob Mansfield (head of chips and wireless), and not to Dan Riccio (head of hardware), which lines up with earlier claims that Mansfield is very interested in wearable technologies.