TAG Heuer plans to launch own smart watch to take on Apple Watch
Just a few days after Apple unveiled the Apple Watch, TAG Heuer has revealed its plans to release its very own smart watch.
The Swiss luxury watch maker had made a smart watch last year, but it was only a one-off model created for members of the Oracle sailing team. Now, though, the company looks set to officially launch a smart watch to take on, among others, Apple’s recently announced wearable device.
However, TAG Heuer is intent on not copying the Apple Watch in making its upcoming smart watch, according to Jean-Claude Biver, the watch business head of TAG Heuer’s parent company, LVMH.
“We want to launch a smart watch at TAG Heuer, but it must not copy the Apple Watch,” Biver told the Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag (via Reuters). “We cannot afford to just follow in somebody else’s footsteps.”
Biver added that Swiss watch makers are set to showcase their smart watches at next spring’s watch fair in Basel, Switzerland.
Before the unveiling of the Apple Watch last Tuesday, Apple design chief Jony Ive was reported to have suggested that Switzerland could be in “trouble” following the arrival of his company’s entry to the smart watch — and even luxury watch — market.
Interestingly, Apple last July was reported to have poached talent from the Swiss watch industry to work on the then rumored smart watch, most notably Patrick Pruniaux, who was TAG Hauer’s vice president of sales and retail.
