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Wearable Tech Heating Up For Holiday; Luxury Players Ramping Up New Models December 16, 2015 (0 comments)
New York, NY—The market for wearable technology is heating up, set to more than double from $12 billion to $25 billion, according to analyst CCS Insight and reported by Luxury Society. Awareness among consumers has rocketed, with—not surprisingly—Apple being the brand most consumers know. Awareness of its wearable tech products is more than two and a half times its competitors, though Fitbit’s awareness levels also tripled since 2014.
Luxury brands are benefiting too—in fact, consumers who ordinarily wear luxury watches are clamoring for ones that do double-duty as smart devices. Bloomberg reports LVMH’s TAG Heuer brand is ramping up production of its smartwatches after being deluged with requests from its retail dealers and agents.
The Swiss brand aims to make 2,000 smartwatches per week, up from its current 1,200. Meanwhile, online sales of its Connected Watch will be suspended probably until May or June to give priority to physical stores, said CEO Jean-Claude Biver in the Bloomberg article.
TAG Heuer is still one of relatively few high-end luxury competitors to the Apple Watch. TAG’s “Connected” smartwatch, priced at $1,500, is modeled after its classic Carrera model and was unveiled last month in a partnership with Google Inc. and Intel Corp. It runs on Google’s Android Wear system.
Tag-Heuer's Connected watch. Photo: Luxury Daily
But the unexpected demand already has the brand looking ahead to adding new models with different varieties, execution, and materials—including gold and diamonds—by 2017.
CCS Insights says one in five consumers get bored with wearable tech and stop using the device. TAG-Heuer is hedging its bets: Should the smartwatch prove to be more a short-lived fad than a long-term trend, or should buyers, once the novelty wears off, become one of the 20% who don’t want to be nagged to exercise by a device on their wrist any more than by their spouses or doctors. The brand plans to let them trade it in for a mechanical watch.
Frederique Constant, meanwhile, presents a new model of its Horological Smartwatch (top of page), powered by MotionX, as an exclusive preview of its 2016 novelties. The brand was the first in the Swiss watch industry to introduce a Horological Smartwatch, and like TAG-Heuer, experienced demand far beyond its expectations.
The new Horological Smartwatch comes with a 42-mm highly-polished rose gold plated steel case, and a navy blue dial that features applied indexes and roman numerals. A convex sapphire crystal protects the dial. The watch is waterproof up to 50 meters and finished with a blue alligator bracelet.
The Horological Smartwatch is built with the MMT-285 calibre, and powered by Fullpower's end-to-end MotionX technology platform, with a battery life of approximately two and a half years before replacement, without the need to be charged.
By combining technology and watchmaking tradition, the Frederique Constant Horological Smartwatch blends traditional luxury with modern technology. Offering hours, minutes and date, the "smart" aspect of this watch comes from its ability to accurately track activity and sleep patterns. The smaller dial at six o'clock shows the percentage of activity or sleep against the user’s goal in real-time. This data is also displayed in the attractive MotionX-365® app, available for iOS and Android, with simple and easy to understand graphics to highlight how much one has moved and slept during the day, week, or month.
The MotionX solution of firmware, applications and cloud infrastructure includes over 110 patents and encapsulates seven years of research and development of a leading Silicon Valley technology leader.