Apple Watch is launching in April, and Apple just scheduled a March 9th press event where it is expected to give it a proper introduction, but between those two dates Swiss watchmakers will finally unveil their own smartwatches that will likely compete with Apple’s high-end Apple Watch collection.
The first two watches announced come from Swiss watch brands Frederique Constant and Alpina (via Bloomberg). 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.
While Swiss-made and from reputable watchamkers, pricing will reportedly start on the low-end for luxury swiss watches at around $1000. The gold-plated Frederique Constant model (pictured right) will sell for $1300.
Another Swiss smartwatch announced today by Mondaine (pictured above, bottom right), the Helvetica No1 Horological Smartwatch, also uses the MMT technology.
MMT is only showing the few models above, but it plans to unveil the full collection later this month at Baselworld, a jewelry tradeshow in Basel, Switzerland that Swiss watchmakers often use to show off their latest creations. The event just so happens to be scheduled for right before the Apple Watch launch.
Kicking off on March 19th, we expect that we might get the first glimpse at luxury, swiss-made smartwatches that could compete with Apple Watch. TAG Heuer, Swatch and other brands have already confirmed that new collections with smartwatch features are on the way. At the very least we’ll get a look at the full collection to accompany the two models unveiled by MMT above.
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It’s just the usual industry reacts to Apple in limited fashion. There will be some people who just want a nice looking watch that tracks fitness but that’s all these do. They won’t be able to compete with Apple Watch for breadth of features.
smart watches are a dead segment, just like Glass and this kind of wearables.
Wow-bizarro world.
You’re being sarcastic, right?
That’s like saying “Tablets are dead” back in 2008. Smart watches haven’t really started yet.
Apple halo glows again on this industry. As soon as Apple announced Watch Swiss makers realized the need to step up in smart watch arena. They were laughing at it with Android Wear offerings. I think Ive’s quote that Swiss should be scared is panning out with these proactive moves. I do not see what is so smart about these watches. It seems Swiss decided to preserve classic mechanical design of a watch and outsource sensor notifications to iPhone. There is one important benefit to this – Apple Watch display by default is off – its not a classical watch face.
It’s interesting that out of the industries Apple has targeted, this time they are at least reacting quickly, even though this particular reaction is both premature and not very interesting.
At least we will find out what happens when you try to compete with Apple instead of just rolling over and playing dead for the first few years like Blackberry.
We will see in 2-3 years time. When Apple Watch 3 will get released probably some of these manufacturers of overpriced obsolete mechanical watches will have already gone bankrupt. Or they might survive much longer than Blackberry. We will see.
This is a LOT closer to “we put some sensors in our watch” than “we’ve built a smartwatch.”
All they have done is drop a Bluetooth Radio in and added a step meter. No heart rate monitor etc.
Is it just me or does the top bar within the app on the iPhone 6 has an Android theme? Is that really the app theme or just someone didn’t pay attention when they photoshopped the image (or both)?
yea, you can’t change that in iOS. It’s just a bad photoshop.
It’s a Xiaomi Android Phone lol
I think that people have a vision of swiss watchmaking that is not complete. There is of courses all the brands like Mondaine, Tissot, Frédéric Constant, Tag Heuer (which was not the case before Jean Claude Biver from LVMH decided it) that are swiss brand but not historical mechanical swiss watchmaking.
Of course these brands are affraid by apple because they will sell the apple Watch on the same price segment as their watches. But for me this is not true watchmaking (Quartz ETA 2892 movments or Sellita).
I Work for a prestigious High End Manufacture in Switzerland (Prices between US$ 8’000 and us$ 1’000’000) and company in the same price range as us has no fear for the apple Watch (even the Edition version) of course some of our customers will buy it and I will also be one of the first to buy one but people should stop telling that the Apple Watch will reduce swiss company sells. it’s a complementary product and people who love watches will buy the best of both world.
The only comments international press talks about are the Swatch group (Biggest watchmaking goupe in Switzerland) and Jean Claude Biver comments (CEO of the Watch segment in the LVMH group). Jean Claude Biver is known in Switzerland for always telling shit about everything, each time he can have his face on a newspaper he jumps on it, so it’s not a suprise if he wants to make a Tag Heuer smartwatch which will have the same result as their smartphone in the past, a huge flop. Regarding Swatch Group, it’s not the same as they want to launch it Under their “SWATCH” brand which is really affordable, but will not jump into the luxury smartwatches.
it’s not swiss company business to make high tech watches and we do not have the people and the competences for that, our strenght are on manufacturing high end mechanical timepieces.
I will be working at Baselworld the whole week and i’m pretty impatient to see what those “low to middle range brands” will offer in their smartwatch and if the features of their watches will Worth the wait and all the articles we read about it.
What’s up with that Android status bar in the image with the iPhone 6?
I call it total ignorance.
Don’t see why it is “smart”?
two completely different markets.
Apple watch and Swiss watches are two completely different product categories, with completely different consumer. How we managed to mangle the category and consumer as one is quite perplexing.
They are so desperate to sell the same obsolete mechanical overpriced classic watches with an obsolete crap Android driven slow SoC inside without even a display… And call this crap a smartwatch ? Seriously?
All these manufacturers deserve to go bankrupt.
Just like those that were making crap fake “smartphones” that weren’t smart at all before the iPhone (and the only good one at the time that was SymbianOS based got killed by greedy managers and then Microsoft completed the annihilation)
Of course they do :D
Apple is set to release the Apple Watch in April with an initial order of five to six million units. High unit sales coupled with a high tag price can quickly establish Apple as the leader in the smartwatch market. Read more : http://bit.ly/1vJ99Qq
I see the target audiences for these two watches completely different. People who are looking more for luxury and style will most likely go for the Swiss watch, whereas those looking for the latest technology will probably gravitate towards the Apple watch. Not to say that Swiss watches are not technologically advanced, but they don’t match up to Apple’s technology. On the other hand Apple doesn’t match up to the aesthetic nature and artisanship of Swiss watches. It all comes down to consumer preference. http://fusionofideas.com/detail/1931/permanent-custom-stealth-armor-and-laser-etching