American watchmaker Fossil has sent us a media invite for an event scheduled on October 5 in New Delhi.
The invite which reads, “Fossil Group invites you to get connected to the future of wearables”, clearly suggests the watch manufacturer is planing to unveil a bunch of smartwatches. In addition, we can also expect the company to announce its Q range of Activity trackers.
Jut last month, Fossil revealed its plans to go bullish on wearables with a slew of big launches. During its second quarter earnings call, the American watchmaker announced it’ll soon embark on an ‘unprecedented launch’ of wearables. Fossil CEO Kosta Kartsotis said the company would launch eight wearables classified into three categories – hybrid, smartwatch and activity tracker. Fossil plans to sell all kinds of wearables, ranging from high-end smartwatches to the more economical fitness trackers.
While back in November 2015, Fossil acquired wearable device specialist MisFit for a whopping $260 million, which gave the company the required impetus to launch its Q range of smartwatches.
The company has already announced two smartwatches for its Q range, the Q Wander and Q Marshal, which are now available for pre-order in the US. Hence, we can expect the company to announce the two smartwatches for the Indian market as well. Both wearables run Android Wear out-of-the-box and essentially pack the same hardware. But the company wants customers to choose these watches based on their design.
The entire Q range essentially includes smartwatches with digital displays, classic analogue-dial watches with fitness trackers and standalone activity trackers.
Besides, the invite also shows names of popular designer brands including Chaps, Emporio Armani, MisFit, Michael Kors and Skagen. They will all be actively involved in designing smartwatches, fitness trackers, and hybrids, that’ll be launched sometime during the October to November period.
Fossil is expected to sell around 50 million watches and accessories annually. It’ll be interesting to see whether the Q range of smart devices could become the company’s top grossing category, as investors slammed Fossil’s poor performance in Q1 this year.
