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Swatch to launch family of smart watches

By Kristopher Fraser

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Fashion

Anyone who thought that Apple was going to be the only one taking a piece of the smart watch pie was obviously living in some delusional reality. Swatch Group announced on Thursday, March 12th, 2015 that they will be releasing a collection of touch screen “smart” watch pieces aimed at special interest groups. The first watch in the collection will be the Swatch Touch Zero One that will be going on sale by the end of summer. The family will launch with five models that are projected to sell between 500,000 to 1 million units.

While the watch is seen as a competitor to the Apple smart watch, Swatch CEO Nick Hayek has made it very clear that this isn’t supposed to be mobile phone 2.0 on your wrist. “We don’t do the reduction of the mobile phone to the wrist. We’re not in consumer electronics. Other people do that. We are a watch company,” Hayek said in a statement obviously poking fun at his competitor Apple. The Swatch smart watch does seem fairly practical in itself.

They have an expected battery life of 9 months to a year, are waterproof, and can easily have their batteries changed by anyone, using a standard fairly affordable Swatch battery as a replacement. Swatch’s smart watch is also significantly cheaper than the Apple watch with prices around the 134 dollar mark. The goal is to give customers smart watch technology at a more accessible price.

Swatch to launch family of smart watches

Swatch has also taken a very niche approach to their smart watches as well. For example, The Smart Touch Zero One will focus on beach volleyball, and even has a calorie counting feature. It’s the perfect watch for the fitness minded tech enthusiast looking for a new time piece.

The Zero Two, which will debut this winter, will be geared towards skiers, the Zero Three, which will be available in spring 2016, will be targeted towards surfers, and the Zero Four will be available in time for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Swatch also plans to launch a fifth product in 2016 that will feature special cooking applications. All Swatch smart watch products will contain special sensors built for their target audience.

Swatch’s future has been looking quite promising lately. The brand recently revealed that their sales for the first two months have been trending well despite January and February being the winter of discontent for the retail sector, and the Swiss National Bank’s surprise abolition in January of its ceiling for the Swiss Franc’s exchange rate against the Euro. This quickly prompted a steep rise in the franc’s value against the Euro, though the impact was less severe against the U.S. dollar, the British pound sterling, and several other major currencies.

Swatch’s stocks are looking excellent with news that Swatch sales are doing very well globally. The news lifted Swatch’s shares by 2.35 percent last week to just slightly over 429 dollars in trading on the Zurich stock exchange. 2015 has already started off as an excellent year for Swatch.

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