Establishment figures seek to allay talk of battle with smartwatch makers, insisting they are into wearables
Watch brands insist they are simply targeting wearables market with the launch of products incorporating smart technology.
Georges Kern, CEO of IWC Schaffhausen, was down to his last interview and he was tired. But when asked about the smartwatch trend, undoubtedly a question he has come across a million times over, he suddenly perked up.
“We are not in [the business of] smartwatches,” he says. “People wrote we are in smartwatches. We are not. We will never be in smartwatches.”
Kern is referring to the announcement in May about the IWC Connect, seemingly Schaffhausen’s answer to the rise of the smartwatch. Kern is adamant this is not the case. “What we are doing is [working] with a wearables company called Misfit, and they developed for us a kind of receiver which we will integrate into the watch bracelets.
“We have to distinguish between wearables and smartwatches. [They are] very different,” he adds. “Wearables are these bracelets the kids are wearing, where you have your health pattern, your sleeping pattern, [and] your steps. Then you have the smartwatches.”
Apple Watch launched in April, and since then, debate has boomed. It had been likened to the second quartz crisis, when the Swiss watchmaking industry declined as people turned to the then-new, and more appealing quartz-watch technology.
