It looks like the Fossil love affair with wearable tech shows no signs of waning and it's going to start looking beyond smartwatches.
Greg McKelvey, executive vice president, chief strategy and digital officer at the Fossil Group has been speaking at a Qualcomm 5G event where he revealed that the fashion giant will extend its connected range to hearables, handbags and even eyewear.
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Smartening up handbags and eyewear appears a good fit when you think about the number of fashion brands that fall under the Fossil Group umbrella. Hearables, though, would be an interesting move for the company. Will we start seeing Skagen smart earbuds, or does Fossil have something entirely different planned altogether? We're definitely intrigued to find out.
Fossil on stage at Qualcomm #5G event. 4.5 millions smart wearables in 2017. Will extend range to hearables, connected handbags & eyewear. pic.twitter.com/wUqxy9HC7R
— Ben Wood (@benwood) October 17, 2017
What we do know is that it's still rolling out those connected timepieces at rapid pace and it's expecting to ship 4.5 million smart wearables in 2017. Over the coming months it'll be launching more hybrid smartwatches including the new Q Neely and Q Jacqueline hybrids for women as well as full fat smartwatches running Google's Android Wear operating system.
It seems likely we'll have to wait until 2018 or even beyond before we see the first Michael Kors smart handbag or a pair of Diesel smart specs, but when they do turn up, we certainly look forward to seeing what the Fossil Group comes up with.
How we test
By Michael Sawh
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.