If Apple thinks it will have the smart watch market to itself, it had better think again. Traditional vendors of watches are on the march.
According to Reuters, the Swiss watch industry is preparing itself to parachute into the smart watch sector, following Apple’s announcement of a range of glitzy wrist watches earlier this week.
The report said that a number of big players in the watch business are quietly preparing to introduce smart watches – including Swatch, Guess, Richmond and LVMH. Richemonte owns the Montblanc brand.
Apparently, the companies believe that Apple may ignite the taste of youngsters for watches and they hope to make sales off the back of the rush of publicity the Apple iWatch has generated.
Swatch publicly confirmed in January that it was ready for the smart watch and its device won’t be tied just to the Apple iPhone but will support the Android operating system too.
And, perhaps crucially, it will have much longer battery life than Apple’s offering.
Guess, too, has far advanced plans for a smart watch.
Perhaps more crucially, the traditional timepiece manufacturers have long established routes to market and unparalleled distribution know how.
