The great smartwatch death: These brands are stopping production

Fossil will no longer make smartwatches. The Fossil Gen6 is the company’s last such watch. Instead, they want to focus on the core business again. Manager Jeff Boyer explained this to the US online magazine The Verge. With Fossil’s withdrawal, the smartwatches from Diesel, Skargen and Michael Kohrs are also likely to disappear from the market. The brands also belong to the Fossil group and their smartwatches were each based on Fossil’s current WearOS watch.

Boyer justified the end with the further development of the market, without going into exactly what he meant by that. However, the manager promised in an interview with The Verge that Fossil would continue to provide Gen6 with updates over the next few years. To what extent remains to be seen, of course.

Fossil Group withdraws from the market

The end may come as a surprise to fans. After all, the smartwatch market has recently been on the rise again. According to market researchers at Counterpoint Research, 11.1 percent more watches were sold by November 2023 than in the same period last year. Strong growth after two weak quarters.

However, Fossil was unable to secure a significant market share with its models. The company had the highest market share in 2017 at 6.7 percent, writes Francisco Jeronimo from Market research institute IDC on X. According to its data, the company has only sold 19 million smartwatches in the past eight years, which means a market share of just 2.2 percent. For comparison: Apple sold 248 million watches during the period.

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