Fossil announced it will be exiting the smartwatch business.
Fossil Group has announced that it is exiting the smartwatch market.
Fossil spokesperson Amanda Castelli revealed in a statement to The Verge that the Group made the strategic decision after having seen the smartwatch market evolve significantly over the past several years.
The Fossil Group will redirect resources to support its core business of designing and distributing traditional watches, jewellery, and leather goods.
The Fossil Group had been one of the biggest makers of Google's Wear OS smartwatches. Back in 2017, the Fossil Group had over 300 wearables within their portfolio of companies.
A year later, it signed a 10-year deal with Puma for the latter to launch its own smartwatches. But the future of this deal seems uncertain at the moment with Fossil Group leaving the space.
And then in 2019, Google entered an agreement with the Fossil Group to acquire $40 million worth of intellectual property in relation to smartwatch technology developed by the latter. Razer collaborated with Fossil in 2022 to introduce the Razer X Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch.
Despite the collaboration with other companies and backing of Google's Wear OS, it seems that the Fossil Group was unable to establish itself in the highly competitive smartwatch market. Counterpoint Research's Q3 data shows Apple in the lead with a 45% market share, followed by Samsung with 18%, and Huawei with 14%. The Fossil Group's share was too small to even register a mention in the report.
Source: The Verge
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