Fossil, Movado battle for smartwatch market share at Baselworld

By

Obi Anyanwu

Published
Mar 23, 2017

The smartwatch and wearables market is heating up. Diesel, Michael Kors, and Montblanc unveiled new styles this week at Baselworld in Switzerland, and Tory Burch and DKNY announced new smartwatch lines to launch this holiday season. On the front end, the new products signify a shift from classic timepieces to smartwatches, but the back end shows a battle for supremacy in the smartwatch market.

 
Fossil is pushing its wearables offering in 2017, because it sees this segment as a growth driver for the company. CEO Kosta Kartsotis said that the company’s success with its smartwatches is a “significant long term opportunity” for Fossil. 

The company debuted new styles for Michael Kors, Tory Burch, DKNY and Diesel that will launch this fall or in the holiday season. While Michael Kors and Diesel expand on their respective smartwatch collections with new touchscreen styles and colorways, DKNY and Tory Burch are entering the market for the first time.

The company has very stiff competition however. Google partnered with Movado and Montblanc to produce smartwatches powered by Android Wear 2.0. The Movado Connect watch and the Montblanc Summit are two of the first watches built with Google’s technology. Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss, two brands that Movado produces watches for, will also utilize Android Wear 2.0 after launching HP-powered watches in 2016.
 
As Fossil and Movado battle for market prevalence for fashion watches, Google aims to encroach on Apple’s control of the smartwatch market. Canalys reported that Apple controls two-thirds of the connected watch market and shipped 11.9 million watches in 2016, or 49% of the market.
 
In addition, Market research firm IDC reported that 19.8 million smartwatches were shipped in 2016, which greatly missed expectations of 28.3 million. Also, the smartwatch market fell 51.6% in the third quarter, according to data from the International Data Corporation, and Apple sales fell 71.6%. It seems that part of the fight for market supremacy is just keeping up the demand for smartwatches.