Tag Heuer is set to launch a
smartwatch at Basel World on Thursday becoming the latest company to enter the smartwatch space.
The announcement, which is set to be at 1pm UK time, is expected to see watch maker Tag Heuer team up with Google and Intel.
In a press conference on Tuesday to kick off the watch trade show in Basel, Tag Heuer said that it couldn’t give those in attendance any
smartwatch news as the Silicon Valley execs hadn’t arrived at #Baselworld2015 yet before adding that “It’s not Apple”.
In a recent interview with
Bloomberg, Biver said:
For a
smartwatch, “we can’t produce the engine, the chips, the applications, the hardware -- nobody can produce it in Switzerland,” Biver said. “The hardware and the software will come from Silicon Valley. But the watch case, the dial, the design, the idea, the crown, that part of the watch will, of course, be Swiss.”
Tag Heuer has long been rumoured to be launching a
smartwatch with comments made by Jean-Claude Biver, the CEO in December last year, stating that the company would make an official announcement by late 2015.
“We’ll only do it if we can be first, different and unique,” he said in an interview with Reuters at the time, without specifying how much energy or money is being invested on the project.
According to Tag Heuer, the company’s research and development business has also reportedly been split into two departments to reflect the “different craftsmanship” involved in developing the
smartwatch. One department focuses on research and development with watchmakers and watch engineers, the other with engineers of technology.
All that energy however seems to have been enough to bring an announcement forward to this week.
Both
Intel and Google weren’t available for comment at the time of writing.
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