Swiss Watchmakers Debut First Luxury "Smartwatches" Ahead Of Apple Launch
The first two watches announced come from Swiss watch brands Frederique Constant and Alpina… The parent company of the brands, Union Horlogère Holding, has teamed up with Fullpower Technologies, the company behind tech in Jawbone, Nike Fuelband, and other wearables, to give their luxury wristwatches fitness smarts. The watches will be marketed as Swiss Horological Smartwatches and offer features closer to a fitness tracking wearable opposed to a full-on smartphone-like experience that the Apple Watch and others aim to offer. The watches will pair with a companion smartphone app, but don’t have a display of their own.
Neither of these strike me as smartwatches. I think the term “feature watch” is a lot more appropriate, but I’m not sure the above examples would even qualify. Offering fitness data like how much you’ve walked is hardly the hot item, nor is it what will make Apple Watch “smart.” That’s attributable to the culmination of a whole slew of concepts including maps, Glances, notifications, automations, haptic communication, etc.
These Swiss companies are in for a hard lesson. Apple Watch Edition is a mobile tech platform that has been upscaled into a status symbol. These expensive brands are cheapening their own status by including trite, useless, one-dimensional aspects of so-called smartwatch functionality. These guys might lose more money by trying to compete with Apple than by simply sticking with what they’re good at.