“Everyone’s been waiting for it, and now it’s happened: The Swiss have finally entered the smartwatch fray,” Stephen Pulvirent reports for Bloomberg.
“Coming only a few weeks after Swatch announced it will release a smartwatch to compete with the Apple Watch, a new Swiss company called Manufacture Modules Technologies (MMT) has introduced a line of smartwatches made in Switzerland,” Pulvirent reports. “MMT is a joint venture between Silicon Valley wearable-technology company Fullpower Technologies and Union Horlogère Holding, which owns Swiss watchmakers Frederique Constant and Alpina. You might think you haven’t heard of Fullpower’s MotionX technology, but it’s what powers your swanky Jawbone and Nike wearables. MMT was created specifically for this project and is headquartered in Geneva, allowing it to market the watches as officially Swiss.”
“Before the end of 2015, MMT will release 10 different models under the banner Swiss Horological Smartwatches. These will be split between the Frederique Constant and Alpina brands and will include models for both men and women,” Pulvirent reports. “Watches will go on sale in June, and prices will start at $995. The gold-plated Frederique Constant model shown below will retail for $1,295.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nope.
How quaint!
“Before the end of 2015, MMT will release 10 different models…”
The end of 2015? Might as well be the end of 3015 with the Apple Watch due in April.
That’ll freeze the market for sure!
Most likely these watches will be sucky quartz with sucky smartness, because they didn’t take the time to figure out how to do it, but just enough time to “react” Swiss Watch, only in name.
Exactly. Clearly, these various ‘luxury’ brand ‘smart’ watches are being rushed out just so they can pretend they’re in the competitive running. Without question, their hardware and software will suck bad. That’s gonna hurt. (o_0)
These Swiss watches do not address the primary issue of NOTIFICATIONS on the “watch face” as the AppleWatch does……
Taking your phone out of your pocket to see the data is counter productive to be diplomatic…….
FAIL!
And they wonder why no one is wearing watches any more. It’s like adding a car radio to a horse and cart and saying we can now compete with motor vehicles.
I live in a rural area of Ohio with many old order Mennonite neighbors. (Wonderful people, by the way.)
Quite a few of the young men actually do have custom buggies with radios in wooden consoles, and LED lighting, including undercar, er, underbuggy lights.
It’s a sight to see late on Sunday night as they are heading home. Sometimes they drag race down the road. (No joke.)
It does seem perfectly timed that iOS has taken on that Swiss look that it has.
And with what they have here, this was the best they could do to compete. Can’t blame them. They still can attract the purists and maintain some digital life. Not bad.
That iPhone 6 has android on it…
I wondered the same thing. The top layout is not iOS.
It’s marketing spin. It’s not reality. It’s Photoshop! ‘Smart’ marketing is a rarity.
If these are “smart” watches, I supposed the old Nike Fuel Band was also a smartwatch. Heck, my old 5th gen iPod nano would also qualify; it tells the time and tracks my run through “motion” tracking.
Sleep – 118% ?!?!?
Now there’s a smart watch for ya. 😉