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Google is buying Fossil’s smartwatch tech for $40M
- PM_ME_YOUR_CAT 8y agoSo...more WearOS Fossils or more Fossil-y WearOS?
- johneth 8y agoGiven Google's attention span, I'd bet on the former.
- glbrew 8y agoFossil out-teched Google?
- dajohnson89 8y agoPurchase the competition and extinguish it. There's a term for this -- acquire and stifle? Something like that.
- harlanlewis 8y agoEmbrace, extend, extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
- itwy 8y agoHe's kidding.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- notatoad 8y agoNot really the competition. Fossil group is Google's strongest partner for Android Wear - as everybody else is ditching the platform, Fossil is still making new ones.
- dep_b 8y agoLike Microsoft buying Nokia?
- hannasanarion 8y agoFossil isn't competing with Google. They're a partner. Google doesn't even have a first-party smartwatch.
- bduerst 8y agoBuild in-house when you have the resources and time, but not the money. Acquire when you have the money but not the resources or the time. Probably part of a larger play.
- quickthrower2 8y ago40M is probably money they found down the back of a sofa at Google. Not much for them.
- notahacker 8y agoThat was my first thought. If Google wanted to go big on smartwatches, I'd have thought that Fossil was important to push WearOS for its ability to design and manufacture interesting and varied designs (a Fossil strength and Google weakpoint) but pretty much any other smartwatch manufacturer seems to have been ahead of Fossil on heart rate monitoring, tracking and sleep tech and mobile payments. So it'll be interesting to see what the R&D is all about.
- talltimtom 8y agoIt sounds like an extremely lowball price, so either google wanted more control of ther collaboration or Fossil needed cash and wanted to kill the dept anyway.
- rongenre 8y ago$40 million with 100 employees? Sounds like a face-saving "successful exit"
- hannasanarion 8y agoHow do you out-tech somebody with no tech? Google has no smartwatch division. This represents a brand new product category for them.
- zubiaur 8y agoPatents? If I remember correctly, Fossil launched one of the first smart watches, running Palm OS.
- opencl 8y agoThey also made some SPOT watches back then (Microsoft tech that pushed things like weather/news/emails/stocks/etc. to watches over FM radio). I had one of the PalmOS watches. Very cool but battery life and inputting text were horrendous. I imagine Palm got most of the patents around that but maybe Fossil got some too.
- amysox 8y agoYes, I had a Fossil Abacus WristPDA (PalmOS 4.0) also at one point. I agree with both your criticisms, especially battery life; that thing drank juice from the battery like an eight-armed alcoholic, and you had to use its special USB cable with added power supply to recharge it nightly. Jamie Zawinski once suggested that I turn PalmOS DaliClock into a "watch face" app, but, once I researched how those worked, I realized it would kill the battery even faster, and wouldn't even work right as watch face apps only got periodic CPU, about once a minute to update their display.
- jordache 8y agodamn FOSL really need the cash huh? $40M and they said yes!?
- bytematic 8y agoDoes that not correlate with other wearable exits
- kkarakk 8y agoreminds me of pebble's "exit"
- ce4 8y agoprobably yes. The Apple watch has eaten into their market - the lower priced fashion watches. Not sure why they'd get rid of their smart watch division. Maybe because only one watch can have wrist time at a time (maybe except for Buzz Aldrin) and Apple catches a big portion of the market by default already (almost all of the iPhone userbase). https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/smartwatches-fossil-apple-update-2017 https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/smartwatches-fossil-apple-...
- jethro_tell 8y agoisn't fossil owned by swatch? They have a generally successful actual watch business, and they probably just decided it's time to stop losing money on this since it's not actually a core business.
- notatoad 8y agoPretty sure fossil is independently owned.
- ascorbic 8y agoThey're not getting rid of it. They're selling an unspecified chunk of IP and the team that worked on it. They're still going to produce smartwatches.
- UncleChis 8y agoDidn't Fossil buy Misfit for like $200M to start its smartwatch department?
- dwighttk 8y ago$260M
- vatueil 8y agoClose: $260 million. Though it appears Fossil is only selling part of its portfolio (mostly IP plus some R&D) and they very much plan to continue producing smartwatches. Curiously, it sounds like Misfit's involved in whatever it was that Google's interested in: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/google-buys-40-million-worth-of-smartwatch-tech-from-fossil-group/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/google-buys-40-milli... > According to a [report](https://www.wareable.com/fossil/google-fossil-wear-os-smartwatch-big-deal-6922 https://www.wareable.com/fossil/google-fossil-wear-os-smartw...) from Wareable, McKelvey stated the deal will bring about a "new product innovation that's not yet hit the market." This is reportedly based on technology that Fossil acquired from wearable company Misfit when it [bought the startup for $260 million](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/fossil-acquires-misfit-to-bring-connectivity-to-more-fashionable-accessories/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/fossil-acquires-misf...) back in 2015. In the Wareable article, Google Wear VP Stacey Burr says they want to bring this unnamed technology to the wider Wear OS ecosystem.
- stcredzero 8y agoUX discussion here. Is there any UX/design/functional reason to have a round watch face on a smartwatch? Analog watches were round to fit the display technology available at the time, the watch dial, which is inherently round. RGB pixel displays are naturally rectangular. My wife thinks that even the smallest latest Apple Watch is way too large for a watch. I wonder if there's some matter of comfort in a relatively flat backed round form factor for a watch? A relatively thick rectangle with a rounder back is going to have a center of mass that is further away from the wrist. It comprises a very small cantilever, which is still quite large on the scales of the traditional watch. (By something like a factor of 3 or so.) The slightly taller rectangular shape will also tend to funnel the motion such a cantilever experiences in an arc parallel to the forearm. None of this was at all an issue for most traditional watches, simply because they were much flatter. Something has always bothered me about Apple Watches when trying them out in the store, and I think it's this. They're not bulky, but there's something about them which seems to keep them from disappearing from my awareness. Even my dad's old Rolex, which isn't huge, but isn't small for a watch, seems to sit on my wrist more comfortably. Even the Tag Heuer, which I think is a bit too big, seems to sit more comfortably on my wrist. Even the big old school watches just didn't have this stick-out-y character.
- kweinber 8y agoRound watches don’t get caught on clothing, or on other people/obstacles as you brush past.
- Swenrekcah 8y agoI personally prefer round for the aesthetics. But that is probably just because I’ve been trained to think watches should be round. I’ve got a Garmin vivoactive 3 which I really like in terms of look and feel.
- bduerst 8y agoSame. I don't own one right now but have considered a smart watch, and only looked at the circular faces. While a smart watch is a new UI for spontaneously consuming information, it's always a fashion accessory when worn.
- SkeptinenSpede5 8y agoGoogle. Nope
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- matmo 8y agoIs anyone satisfied with their Fossil watch? I have a Fossil Q Explorist and it's so slow and laggy that I almost wonder if I got a lemon. It takes like 3 taps to click or swipe before anything registers. I'm pretty sure my original Moto 360 is faster. I only wear it because it looks decent and occasionally works. I really wanted to like it, but my experience has just been ... bad.
- arthurcolle 8y agoMaybe try to RMA the device? Sounds like it might have just not gone through very good quality assurance. Totally unrelated but I have a fenix 5x (Garmin) and it is just amazing. Sure, the display quality leaves a little to be desired and it was really pricey, but the information density is just off the charts.
- Hippocrates 8y ago40MM doesn’t sound like a huge deal for Google but I still cannot fathom why they would purchase this. I’d rather have a pimple on my forehead than a fossil smartwatch on my wrist. An appropriate name for Google’s smartwatch line would be “caprolite”, which means fossized excrement.
- SomeHacker44 8y agoI love my Fossil Q because it does one thing many other smart watches just don't: tells the time, all the time, no motion required, in a high contrast fashion. All I really want out of a watch is that, plus long battery life (weeks at least, months preferably), self-charging, self-time setting, and, if I am lucky, some sort of "hey look at your phone" alert. I get most of these with the Fossil Q. Others with my Citizens and Seiko non-smart watches, one of which has an e-ink display. Nothing has them all. Oh well. I wonder if Google will make a Fossil Q which has it all. I do not need a display, health monitoring, etc.
- sgillen 8y agoSounds like you almost just want a regular "dumb" watch.
- NoPicklez 8y agoSounds like you are looking or the hybrid smartwatches. Garmin do a very good job of displaying the time in high contrast, but I'm not sure if they give you the option of being able to have the display on all the time.
- useful 8y agothe garmin 935 is basically my perfect smart watch, always on high contrast display with 2 weeks of battery life
- sand500 8y agoYep, most of their watches have the display on all the time. The term to look for is "transflective memory-in-pixel" in specs. This was the main reason I loved my pebble watches as iirc all android wear watches couldn't do this.
- neogodless 8y agoDell made their money by becoming the first big computer manufacturer to let you pick and choose how you wanted your computer configured, and then delivering it to you a few weeks later (which was fast, at the time, for a personalized machine!) Apple and Fossil and Samsung and all those others are trying to make varieties of watches, but perhaps by jamming every feature someone might want into most of their watches, they are falling short on other features (ahem battery life) that other customers prefer. I own a Fossil watch and a Citizen, and they are very pretty (and do other things, too, I guess.) Like this parent comment, I want a smart watch that's mostly a watch, but not just a watch. I wouldn't mind getting email or text notifications. In my world, that's something that happens just a few times a day. So it wouldn't annoy me. But just because I don't want my heart-rate tracked or a built-in GPS does not automatically imply that I don't want any other feature smart watches have that mechanical watches do not.
- glenrivard 8y agoBuying at 1/6 of what Fossil paid just 2 years ago. Pretty good deal for Google. "Fossil acquires wearable maker Misfit for $260 million" https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/12/9725478/fossil-group-acquires-wearable-maker-misfit-260-million https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/12/9725478/fossil-group-acq... Hope Google also integrates Soli with a Pixel watch.
- davidwitt415 8y agoHopefully it's to get more control over the hardware, especially the chipset. Qualcomm is dragging down WearOS with their glacial pace and underwhelming commitment to the platform.
- gaara87 8y agoI feel real good about my Fossil Sport :) Impressive to see Google's aggressive push into the hardware market. Here's to hoping that a Pixel watch is good enough to set a bench mark like what the Nexus/Pixel phones have done.
- hema_n 8y agoTry for fitbit
- mkbkn 8y agoCase study: Sailfish Watch https://blog.jolla.com/watch/ https://blog.jolla.com/watch/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_smartwatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_smartwatch
- icodemuch 8y agoHopefully this means that my Fossil Q Wander is going to be on the cutting edge of Google's software updates now. Big fan of this watch by the way, only complaint is that it doesn't led itself to workouts as well as some other watches.
- solarkraft 8y agoThere's a good chance they'll run it into the ground.