Fossil joins Apple Watch competition with Moto 360-like Android Wear product
Presenting Tuesday at the annual Intel Developer Forum, fashion brand Fossil teased its first competitor to the Apple Watch, a device that will run Google's Android Wear platform.
Image Credit: CNet
The company didn't announce many features, but on Twitter, Intel noted that the device will use its technology and ship later this year. A photo obtained by CNet shows that the product is similar in design to the Moto 360, one of the first Android Wear products, including a round display cut off by a black bar at the bottom.
The device will also offer a silver finish and multiple bands, photos from Engadget indicate. These include leather and metal link options.
A full product announcement, including pricing, should happen in coming months.
The smartwatch market has so far been dominated by technology companies such as Apple, Garmin, Pebble, Motorola, and Samsung. Traditional watch companies are only beginning to enter the field, in some cases out of concern that the Apple Watch could eat into low- to mid-range sales.
Fossil's product may be more directly aimed at competing with Apple than others, given the choice of materials and its current conventional options costing less than $1,000. Apple has focused heavily on making the Watch a fashion item, producing a wide variety of bands and using materials like sapphire, stainless steel, and/or gold in more expensive units.
Image Credit: CNet
The company didn't announce many features, but on Twitter, Intel noted that the device will use its technology and ship later this year. A photo obtained by CNet shows that the product is similar in design to the Moto 360, one of the first Android Wear products, including a round display cut off by a black bar at the bottom.
The device will also offer a silver finish and multiple bands, photos from Engadget indicate. These include leather and metal link options.
A full product announcement, including pricing, should happen in coming months.
The smartwatch market has so far been dominated by technology companies such as Apple, Garmin, Pebble, Motorola, and Samsung. Traditional watch companies are only beginning to enter the field, in some cases out of concern that the Apple Watch could eat into low- to mid-range sales.
Fossil's product may be more directly aimed at competing with Apple than others, given the choice of materials and its current conventional options costing less than $1,000. Apple has focused heavily on making the Watch a fashion item, producing a wide variety of bands and using materials like sapphire, stainless steel, and/or gold in more expensive units.
Comments
Man, that's quite a hockey puck.
Bring on the "competition"...
Of course Apple is always graded on a curve. Its sales being compared to a completely different product.
I have a fossil watch which I have owned and cherished for years, if I ever considered purchasing a smart watch though it would be Apple. I am confused as to the reason why traditional watchmakers would deal threatened by Apple and cosy up to crappy android variants, this is not the future.
Man, this is one ugly piece of crap. Mid level watch makers are going to get their ass kicked, and then by relying on Google, get their profit kicked, until they die.
It's like a cross between the Moto 360 (flat tire to accommodate ambient light sensor) and LG Urbane (lugs). How are any of these going to stand out when they all look alike and run the same software?
In real life all those things look like shit. The fact they use Android wear is dooming they to bad integration, bad performance and bad profit... Fantastic... For Apple.
To be fair, most watches look alike. I could pick a dozen $5,000, and up, watches, put them in front of you, and without looking closely, you would have a difficult time telling one from the other.
What I'm surprised about here, is that while most Fossil watches are cheap, at least, within the price restrictions, they are stylish, and differentiated. For them to use the same cheap, and crappy screen the Motorola does, is a disappointment.
I've seen the LG Urbane up close and personal, and it really looks cheaply made. The finish is crap. It looks as though it was cast from pot metal and cheaply plated. Maybe it was.
I see — and have seen well before the Apple Watch was ever announced — that wearables are the next step in personal computing. The wrist is an ideal place for wearables for many reasons, which is why watches moved there when they could and never left, so I do see why they are threatened by forward progress. Will the traditional watch still have a place in society tomorrow? It's extremely likely, but I doubt they will have the same level of appeal, revenue and profit as it did throughout the 20th century.
PS: After wearables I predict the next personal computing device market will move to, for lack of a better name, "inwearly" devices. These are devices that are ingested, injected, implanted, inserted, or even sewn into the epidermis.
It is pitiful.
The Apple Watch is a hardware product beside the software. Android wear is just software. While I would bet that if medium, and high, priced watch makers could get the insides of the Apple Watch for themselves from Apple, and then build their own cases around it, as most do for mechanical movements, they would beat each other up climbing over each other to get to Apple's door.
But they can't.
They can get Android wear though.
1) nobody wears watches any more
2) Apple Watch is doomed because my Rolex works at the bottom of the ocean
3) Apple didn't invent circular icons
4) Apple Watch is a failure because Tim Cook won't release numbers
5) Apple Watch is doomed because it's limited to just iPhone users
6) Apple Watch is doomed because my Pebble has a 7-day battery
7) Apple Watch is doomed because Apple bought off celebrities with gold watches
8) Apple Watch is doomed because it can't be handed down to your grandchildren as heirlooms
9) Apple Watch is doomed because Jony Ive spends his days snapping selfies with fashion industry snobs
10) circles > squares. Look at my millimeters! Look at them!
I agree. I'm one of these who loves the complex, partly to mostly, hand manufactured nature of the high quality mechanical watch, and I have a few.
But, except for the really higher priced brands, a lot of medium priced watches will disappear. By medium priced, I meant from about $400 to $2,000. Cheap watches will remain, because they are cheap. Really high priced ones will remain because they are mostly a status symbol no matter what the companies and the watch owners say otherwise. Some are even collectibles as soon as they are released.
If Google gets their system in order, then it will do just fine, believe it or not. I'm not about to become complacent, and I advise others here not to becom either. I well remember the first year Android phones came out. They did terribly, and the question asked was; "Where are all the Android phones?" Well, the second year they began to come out, and we all know what happened. Same thing for tablets.
At some point, Android Wear will have much better watches, and people will start buying them, particularly if they remain less expensive.
Putting a digital display inside a classic watch body makes about as much sense stylistically as replacing a grandfather clock face with a round digital screen.
Putting a digital display inside a classic watch body makes about as much sense stylistically as replacing a grandfather clock face with a round digital screen.
You just gave Samsung a great idea ...