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ZURICH, Switzerland — Swatch Group AG, the biggest Swiss watchmaker, said it doesn't rule out forming agreements with consumer-electronics companies to help produce smartwatches amid increasing competition in timepieces with more functions.
“We already work with a lot of them as a supplier of various strategically important components,” Beatrice Howald, a spokeswoman for Swatch, said in an e-mail, adding that the company has all the necessary technologies for a smartwatch. “We don’t exclude that it could come to deeper collaboration, but it’s not on our priority list.”
Intel Corp., the world’s largest computer-chip maker, is in talks with unidentified Swiss watchmakers to develop smartwatches, Julien Laval, a spokesman for the company, said yesterday, confirming a SonntagsZeitung report. Howald didn’t comment specifically on Intel. Swatch produces components for fitness bands made by Garmin Ltd.
The smartwatch market will probably expand to about $10 billion in 2018 from as much as $1.8 billion this year, Citigroup Inc. analysts have forecast, with half of the market in the future coming from traditional watch wearers switching to the tech devices. The Swiss watch industry is struggling this year amid political protests in Hong Kong, which imports about a fifth of the timepieces that Switzerland produces.
By: Corinne Gretler and Jan Schwalbe; Editors: Celeste Perri; Thomas Mulier and Tom Lavell
