On the heels of Misfit announcing the Phase, its first hybrid smartwatch, a bunch of other Fossil Group brands want in on that action. Chaps, Diesel, Emporio Armani, and Michael Kors have all added hybrid smartwatches to their connected devices lineup. All of of their smarthwatches use traditional, analog watch displays, but you can track fitness and delivery notifications on them with just a few taps.
Those brands join other Fossil Group-owned brands that have put their spin on smartwatches and fitness trackers. The Fossil brand launched its Q line of wearables last year, which now includes Android Wear watches, discreet fitness trackers, and hybrid smartwatches. Fossil dabbled in wearables years ago, well before modern fitness trackers or the Apple Watch existed. But the company really began its push into that marketplace after acquiring Misfit last year. Since then, not only has Fossil adapted some of Misfit’s technology into its wearables, but Misfit has also taken pages out of its parent company’s playbook, particularly with the launch of its Phase hybrid smartwatch.
To bring the “hybrid” aspect to other brands under the Fossil umbrella, company representatives told me that each brand was tasked with designing the watch first. Then, many of them researched their customers to see what features they most use in a watch, connected or not. For example, Emporio Armani customers wanted a second time zone on their watches more than users of other brands, so all of Emporio Armani’s hybrid watches have one sub-dial that can be customized to show any time zone. Kate Spade’s hybrids have small champagne glasses at the six o’clock hour that gradually fill up based on a countdown that you can customize, which could be for when your vacation starts, when your birthday comes around, or when happy hour begins.
Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Nearly all Fossil brands now have hybrid smartwatches