Threatened by Silicon Valley, Swiss watchmakers turning ‘smart’

As technology firms like Apple increasingly threaten to intrude into the wristwatch market with 'smart' watches, Switzerland's famed makers of traditional watches are feeling the threat, and responding in kind.

Mondaine is probably the first off the block: in a few weeks, the Swiss company will release a watch with extra smarts; mainly activity tracking. The company will unveil its latest product at the Baselworld trade show in March.

The Mondaine Helvetica No 1 Smart looks like a standard analog watch, without the blinking LED lights, multiple buttons, or other appearances that could indicate a smart watch.

Yet it can track number of steps taken by the wearer, distance travelled, and sleep quality. It features a second activity dial that looks like a simple countdown timer or something similar, but has many more functions.

The watch includes the same MotionX and Sleeptracker sensors found in wearables from Jawbone and Nike.

With the necessary sensors now available and inexpensive enough to incorporate into existing designs, one can expect to see plenty more timepiece lines to make the jump from simple to smartwatch. Tag Heuer, Swatch, and several other major watch-makers have smartwatches in the pipeline.

Hot competition
Swatch, the US giant in easily affordable plastic wristwatches since around 1983, also plans to release its first smartwatch around the same time in March-April.

The launch window would seem to pit the Swatch wearable against the Apple Watch, coming in April.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook announced on Tuesday that the highly anticipated Apple Watch will begin shipping in April. It had unveiled the watch last September.

Fossil Group Inc and Intel Corp announced in September last year that they will be collaborating to further develop wearable technology for the fashion industry.

Fossil Group, a global design, marketing and distribution company specializing in fashion accessories, said will partner with technology hardware major Intel, to identify, support and develop emerging trends in the wearable technology space.

The companies will work together on emerging products and technologies that will be developed for the fashion-oriented consumer.

Japanese electronics giant Sony – which announced this month that it is moving away from the crowded TV and white goods space to focus on emerging products – has already launched an Android-powered smartwatch; but it looks more like a modern internet device than a traditional watch.

Silicon rules
Mondaine's new watch "proudly references its past, while simultaneously taking a bold step into its future," according to the company. It will be able to gently rouse users at naturally beneficial points in their sleep cycle, and provide "Get-Active alerts and Smart coaching" through a companion app running on a phone or tablet.