You’ve got to hand it to Sir Jonathan Ive: Apple’s head of design knows how to scare the competition. Wearables at CES were a huge disappointment, and there was a palpable sense that everyone was just waiting for the Apple Watch to come out.
Even the Swiss watch industry is scared. After initially dismissing the Apple Watch as a design joke, TAG Heuer’s luxury watch guru is singing a new tune.
“It’s a fantastic product, an incredible achievement,” Jean-Claude Biver, head of the watch division at TAG’s parent company LVMH, told Bloomberg. “I’m not just living in the tradition and culture and the past, I also want to be connected to the future. The Apple Watch connects me to the future. My watch connects me to history, to eternity.”
That’s a 180-degree change of opinion from Biver’s initial reaction to the Apple Watch last September.
“This watch has no sex appeal,” he said at the time. “It’s too feminine and looks too much like the smartwatches already on the market… To be totally honest, it looks like it was designed by a student in their first trimester.”
Yesterday, Biver told Bloomberg that TAG Heuer is developing its own smartwatch to counter the Apple Watch. Unnamed Silicon Valley tech companies will provide the tech while TAG Heuer will design the look.
If the name TAG Heuer sounds familiar, it’s because Apple poached one of its executives before the Apple Watch was announced.
TAG’s upcoming smartwatch will also abandon the revered “Swiss Made” label, which requires at least 50 percent of the watch’s components to be made in Switzerland. The watch will have GPS and sensors for health monitoring, although TAG hasn’t revealed any specifics yet.
Biver said the Apple Watch mainly threatens watches under the $2,000 price point. Apple hasn’t revealed pricing beyond the base model’s $349, but it’s looking like Jony Ive was right when he said Swiss watchmakers are f**ked.
