Fossil boss hoping that the renewed interest in watches trickles down
Fossil is hoping that the new era of smartwatches will give a boost to the traditional watch industry, and revealed that it would be adding smart tech to its line up this year.
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The company’s CEO Kosta Kartsotis, speaking at Piper Jaffrays annual conference, said that, “The watch industry is a $65 billion industry, and if you look at the tech industry, it’s trillions of dollars in consumer spending a year.
“If just a small percentage of that would come into our category, it will change the industry.”
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The Street reported that Kartsotis also confirmed that the company will begin to release watches “with added technology” in Q4 2015 and more in 2016.
It’s not the first time that Fossil has been linked with smartwatches, and it was the focus of a partnership announced by Intel back in September 2014 – a marriage that has yielded exactly zero technology.
The company has smartwatch experience, of course. Back in 2002 the company was awarded ‘best of Comdex 2002’ for the Palm Pilot watch. It featured a 160 x 160 display, 2MB of internal memory and Palm apps such as address book, memo pad, to-do list and a calculator.
Like Swatch – which is also painstakingly planning its riposte to the Apple Watch – Fossil’s stock is down 36% over the last year, which could be evidence that the smartwatch revolution is taking its toll already.
Swatch’s smartwatch will be released in August.
