At the rate Apple is going, it may very well be the last maker of consumer electronics to introduce a smartwatch now that China's Huawei is reportedly readying their own device set to unveil later this month.

WSJ.D reported Monday that another contender for the smartwatch crown is planning to step into the ring during this year's Mobile World Congress event, which kicks off in Barcelona, Spain on February 24.

A spokeswoman for China-based Huawei Technologies declined to elaborate on the company's smartwatch plans, which will make their debut alongside a new smartphone and two new tablets at the annual mobile conference.

One thing's for sure, however: The smartphone Huawei plans to announce won't be a sequel to the Ascend P6, instead choosing to hold a separate launch event for the company's next-generation flagship handset.

Tick-tock

The burgeoning smartwatch market continues to make headlines, with Sony, Pebble, Samsung and others duking it out amidst rumors that Apple will soon jump into the fray with its own Bluetooth-connected wearable for the wrist.

Although Huawei is ranked third behind Samsung and Apple as a major player in the global smartphone market, the Chinese vendor has little brand recognition for anything but networking gear outside of its home turf.

Huawei took the wraps off a video game console called the Tron at last month's Consumer Electronics Show, but now plans to follow rival Chinese manufacturer ZTE into the wearables market.

Ironically, smartwatches appear to be a "market" in name only thus far: Canalys recently claimed a mere 500,000 such devices would ship globally last year, but expected that figure to mushroom to five million in 2014 - assuming major players like Apple, Google and Microsoft decide to join the fray.

• Get a glimpse of what the Samsung Galaxy S5 might have in store for us!

Remember when LG announced that the LG G Pro 2 would be making its debut this month and everyone figured that that meant it would show its massive face at MWC?

Apparently that rather reasonable assumption was way off and we're set to see it a lot sooner, February 13 in fact.

An invitation posted by ZDNet shows an event this Thursday between 10:30am and 1pm in Seoul prefaced with the line "Knock-knock knockin' on", a reference the knock-on feature that originally graced the LG G2.

3..2..GO!

A pre-MWC launch would certainly guarantee LG's latest flagship more attention than getting lost amidst the MWC noise.

It would also give the G Pro 2 an 11-day head start over its Korean rival the Galaxy S5.

Little snippets of information, including the 13MP camera with "OIS plus" technology, Ultra HD video recording and a 1W speaker, have already got us salivating over a handset expected to sport a 6-inch screen.

Whether the LG G Pro 2 decides to step into the limelight on Thursday or at MWC 2014 you can guarantee that we're going to bring you all the latest gossip so don't go anywhere.

• What else should you expect from MWC 2014?

With the HTC M8 launch just around the corner it might seem a little odd that HTC is currently talking about targeting the middle ground rather than the premium end of the market.

Driven by two years of poor sales and a corresponding 80% share price drop the Taiwenese firm has said that it will look towards its cheaper range, currently toting the HTC Desire 300 and Desire 500, as a way of combating the heavy decline.

Speaking to Reuters in New York HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang stated that she believes the problem was that "we only concentrated on our flagship. We missed a huge chunk of the mid-tier market".

Looking lower

This means that HTC will look to releasing handsets around $150 to $300 (around £90 to £180, AU$168 to AU$335) putting them up against the likes of the impressive Moto G, although avoiding the "very, very low-end market".

According to Richard Ko of Taipei based analyst firm KGI Securities a move to more affordable handsets is needed as "low-price and high-spec" is a "trend for this year". A quad-core budget HTC Desire 310 would certainly fit that bill.

Lower price points would allow HTC to target both the established smartphone markets dominated by Samsung and Apple handsets, as well as emerging markets where Chinese manufacturers like Huawei and ZTE are making waves.

A need to take on the marketing might of Apple and Samsung has also been highlighted as rave reviews of the HTC One (including our own five-stars) didn't translate into strong sales. Not even Iron Man could help despite being backed up by sharp suits and hipster trolls.

Back to basics?

When it comes to producing cheaper handsets HTC certainly has the know how having made its name as a manufacturer of network branded handsets, although that isn't an area that HTC plans to return to in its effort to boost sales.

"We're not even considering that," Wang confirmed - stating that manufacturing partnerships must include HTC branding alongside those of mobile carriers.

2014 is certainly shaping up to be an important year for HTC with the invitations to the HTC M8 launch event due to be sent out in about two weeks sitting alongside a fight to stave off a third straight quarter of operating losses.

Talk of Samsung releasing two flavours of its Galaxy S5 flagship may have died down in recent weeks but that hasn't stopped two massively-varied spec lists showing up on benchmarking app AnTuTu.

Picked up by Sam Mobile, the first benchmarks show the almost-expected quad-core 2.5GHz Snapdragon 800 CPU and 3GB RAM Galaxy S5.

Interestingly this higher powered SM-G900R4 variant's display is also set to rock a 2560 x 1440 QHD resolution appearing to dispel rumours that it would only pack a 1080p screen.

Things take a little turn for the worse when it comes to the SM-G900H variant with the majority of specifications taking a hit.

That quad-core Qualcomm CPU has been upgraded to an octa-core Exynos but has been clocked at 1.5GHz with only 2GB RAM to back it up.

Location, location, location

A full HD 1920 x 1080 screen is also set to feature on this lower-powered handset - likely the one we saw mentioned a couple of days ago.

Elsewhere, specs match up a lot better with the same 2MP and 16MP cameras and Android 4.4.2 KitKat, although the higher-powered variant does also come with 32GB of storage compared to the 16GB in the G900H.

This means we could be set to see two rather different handsets roll up in a couple of weeks time at MWC 2014 but questions still remain as to why.

Samsung was always likely to launch models of its flagship in order to better suit different markets. Best guesses involve the Galaxy S5 varying because of one key factor; 4G LTE. After all, last year's Galaxy S4 drew a lot of criticism for the same reasons - so here's hoping that it's just the same as previously, where two CPU models were unleashed for different markets.

• If that's set to be the case, John McCann will certainly be happy.

Apple's iOS 7.1 isn't expected to make any revolutionary changes to the OS, but a few welcome bug fixes are certainly expected.

And as for when we'll get our fingers on it, some "reliable sources" have told 9to5Mac that we can expect the update in March, echoing a claim we'd previously heard.

We're told not to expect any surprise features beyond some speed enhancements, an improved Calendar app and a bunch of bug fixes.

Though there's also a chance we could see Apple's anticipated iOS in the Car feature debut alongside.

• Tempted to go Apple? Read our iOS 7 review.