Luxury brands aren’t giving up on smartwatches

The latest to enter the fray is Hublot, with the launch this week of the Big Bang E. With other players including Louis Vuitton and Frederique Constant also well established, it is clear that, despite the Apple Watch outselling the entire Swiss watch industry in 2019, luxury watch brands are still unwilling to let the executives in Cupertino take this market from them without a fight… More here.

As a luxury brand you either have Android Wear to use on your very expensive smartwatch, which is a bit like sticking a Ford engine in a Rolls Royce, or you build your own OS, app and sensors.

The latter is extremely difficult, even if you are a company with lots of cash to play with, and even more so with the likes of Apple in the game. The mature ecosystem that is on millions of wrists is close to impossible to compete with, look at Fossil etc, and so the only option to play with is to build a quality case etc and stick Android Wear in it.

And that is just crazy.