“Tag Heuer’s just released Carrera Connected is not so much a smart watch as it is the Swiss watch industry’s caricature of a smart watch,” Mark Hibben writes for Seeking Alpha. “The Connected is too bulky, too limited and way too expensive compared to Apple Watch. But it has the Tag Heuer brand slathered all over it… The Carrera Connected is the product of the partnership of Tag Heuer, a division of luxury goods maker LVMH, Intel, and Google. That must have been an interesting collaboration. Like oil and water, the exclusive luxury goods pedigree of LVMH could not have mixed easily with the commodity device approach of Intel and Google.”
“The result is an undistinguished commodity Android Wear watch with just the thinnest sheen of Tag Heuer luxury floating on the surface. The Connected is 12.8 mm thick and lacks the heart rate sensor common in smart watches, a $1,500 commodity Android device masquerading as a luxury mechanical watch,” Hibben writes. “Apparently, Tag Heuer thought that this would be good enough to compete with Apple. This is where their fundamental contempt for Apple came into play. This is a contempt I hear echoed in countless bearish analyses of Apple. To the bears, Apple is simply a brand, and the secret of Apple’s success is simply brand marketing. So, in ‘imitation’ of Apple, Tag makes sure that its name or logo appears in four different places on the strap, the crown, the bezel, and the LCD watch face itself.”
“Perhaps the most insincere aspect of the Carrera Connected is the trade-in deal being offered by Tag Heuer… After two years, a Connected Watch owner can bring the watch into a TAG Heuer retailer, trade it in with an additional $1,500, and receive a mechanical TAG Heuer watch in return,” Hibben writes. “Tag is saying to consumers that when this silly smart watch fad blows over in a couple of years, Tag will graciously allow its customers to upgrade to a real watch for a modest additional sum.”
“If only all of Apple’s competitors were this stupid. OK, it’s not so much stupidity as ignorance, an ignorance that Apple’s competitors often take years to overcome after Apple disrupts their market,” Hibben writes. “It took years for Apple’s competitors to wise up in the case of iPhone, and apparently it will take years for Apple Watch as well.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If only all of Apple’s competitors were this stupid? They are.
Exhibit A: Apple’s iPhone owns 92% of smartphone industry’s profits.
Exhibit B: Apple took over half of PC industry profits in 2014.
Exhibit C: Apple iPhones and iPads took 52.1% of mobile ad revenue in Q315.
Stay fixated on going broke chasing market share while Apple banks the bulk of the profits, dumbasses.
SEE ALSO:
TAG Heuer must think Android Wear users are stupid – November 9, 2015
Watch TAG Heuer announce their answer to Apple Watch – November 9, 2015
TAG Heuer CEO Biver: Luxury Apple Watches will become obsolete – October 12, 2015
I own two $6,000 Swiss watches, but I wear my Apple Watch most of the time – August 14, 2015
Swiss watch exports hit worst slump in five years as Apple Watch debuts – June 19, 2015
As Swiss watchmakers dismiss Apple Watch, Swiss National Bank increases Apple holdings by 60% – May 10, 2015
Apple Watch Edition is poised to disrupt the classic Swiss watch – April 16, 2015
Jean-Claude Biver changes his tune, calls Apple Watch ‘a fantastic product, an incredible achievement’ – January 20, 2015
TAG Heuer plans smartwatch as honcho Jean-Claude Biver changes mind as Apple Watch looms – December 16, 2014
Apple Watch starts countdown on face off with Swiss industry – October 31, 2014
The fashion elite crowd around Apple Watch at Colette in Paris – September 30, 2014
Jean-Claude Biver: ‘The Apple Watch cannot compete at all with European watches’ – September 15, 2014
Jean-Claude Biver: Apple Watch ‘too feminine; looks like it was designed by a student in their first trimester’ – September 16, 2014
Barclays: Apple Watch could crush companies like Fossil – September 16, 2014
Jean-Claude Biver: ‘The Apple Watch cannot compete at all with European watches’ – September 15, 2014
Old school watch makers don’t get Apple Watch – September 12, 2014
Apple Watch, the world’s first real smartwatch, will be a massive hit – September 9, 2014
Apple iWatch designer Jony Ive: Switzerland is in deep shit – September 4, 2014
Yet more proof that Android is for poor people – June 27, 2014
“ “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest–
…Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest–
…Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
Tag Heuer, Intel & Google execs must have been singing this song as they cobbled up that hand cuff!
Execs need to appear competent in the eyes of their investors, but I suspect that they’re more able to design a good golden parachute than crafting an adequate response to Apple. Perhaps their inevitable hoard of money and the knowledge that not investments pan out will comfort them in their failure.
So TAG gave their blood to Intel and their soul to Android and even have an “Intel Inside” slapped on the back of this abomination?
They should have called it the “Eunuch” series of TAG watches.
“..But it has the Tag Heuer brand slathered all over it..”
I remember when tons and tons of $tupid “ANALyst and Steve Ballmer criticized apple for its prices saying that people were overpaying for a normal product just because it has the apple logo.. I wonder where that people are now.
Most of the tech industry people (e.g., Ballmer) are unemployed, while the Analy$ts are somehow still employed. Turns out you don’t need brains or analytic success to be a ‘successful’ (i.e., employed) analy$t.
Well a different retirement cottage than occupied by this latest Tag buffoon who will no doubt have ample time to make his cheese that going by the one he presented on stage is only a little larger than the first ‘real’ smart watch he boasted about immediately beforehand. Where do they get these clowns from?
Anyone who owns a regular Tag Heuer luxury watch must be pissed right not because the value of their watch just went way down.
“and lacks the heart rate sensor common in smart watches”
That was a smart move on Tag Heuer part, that way their customers can’t view the heart attack they have when they find out they’ve been taken.
If they had put the heart rate sensor in, it would have been an inch thick.
Ye gads, the Tag Heuer smart watch does less than the Apple Watch and yet is about 2 mm/.08″ thicker.
This sounds like a design that was thrown together in 3-4 months.
No wonder they will take the watch back in 2 years and try to sell the customer something else!
No TAG’s attitude is not just ignorance, it is this Swiss SMUGNESS. When I watched the agonizing keynote that TAG put on the other day, I thought it was a parody. To offer customers a replacement MECHANICAL watch if they don’t like their butt ugly smartwatch telegraphs their confusion about the role of wearables as extenders and amplifiers of the mobile phone, and, when done right, save the wearer TIME and improve usability, not to mention allowing the wearer to be free of fumbling for a phone for everything.
I give TAG less than one year to cancel this abomination.
dan
Size does not matter.
Leadership . . . there are numerous accounts of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and “the projects that we scrapped,” including Steve Jobs scrapping an iPhone prototype in 2005. Sometimes you have to say, “this isn’t ready,” or “this is just a bad idea.” . . . What concerns me is that Tag Heuer, which makes excellent mechanical watches, didn’t have someone in their leadership who could say, “You know, this is not our market–let it go.”
I find it inexplicable to read
“Luxury Watch”
And
“Android”
in the same sentence.
This is a joke watch.