5 ms·

Wear OS's most consistent OEM quits: Fossil stops making smartwatches

47 points by ramn7 3y ago

freedomben 3y ago
It's a real shame because the platform is really starting to get good. > Google lured Samsung away from its in-house Tizen OS with preferential treatment, including exclusive rights to the new "Wear OS 3" release and exclusive apps. That year, 2021, featured head-to-head August Wear OS releases of Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 and Fossil's Gen 6 smartwatch. Samsung's watch had a faster, Samsung-made SoC, ran Wear OS 3, and cost $250, while Fossil was stuck with Wear OS 2, a slower Qualcomm chip, and a $300 price tag. It sounds like Google really did sabotage them and they have a right to be upset.
- dangus 3y ago
  I disagree. Their smartwatch sales peaked almost 10 years ago. Fossil is a declining brand relative to its traditional watch peers as well. That kind of thing only happens thanks to long-term mismanagement that Fossil can only blame itself for. They’re a company that any businessperson would throw under the bus to court Samsung.
  - partitioned 3y ago
    At this point the company is a fossil
- rjzzleep 3y ago
  Another thing to mention is that Qualcomm had zero incentive to make something good for wearables. It's an unfortunate side effect of having such an absolute market dominating position.
- kotaKat 3y ago
  Google sabotaged the entire product with the Samsung partnership. I watched people abandon Wear OS both from the hardware front and the software front because of the fragmentation of the platform. It doesn't help that Google continued to have no fucking clue what they wanted to do with Fitbit in the meantime and still feels like they don't have a clue.
  - doublepg23 3y ago
    > It doesn't help that Google continued to have no fucking clue what they wanted to do with Fitbit in the meantime and still feels like they don't have a clue. Sounds like Google for the past decade.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
  Google sabotaged the entire WearOS platform, they gave the market to Apple on a silver plate. Lack of updates, not treating it as a first class platform, etc
  - Fnoord 3y ago
    Apple? I mean, I don't have an iPhone, so it is pointless to have an Apple Watch, right?
    - PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
      No but I wouldn't be shocked if compatible watches influences people's choice of smartphone, it did for me.
      - Fnoord 3y ago
        Well, an iPhone. How marvelous. I cannot even replace the battery or screen in 5 minutes. I have an Android smartphone which is easy to repair (Fairphone). It is a dealbreaker for me (although I'm glad Apple have been improving lately, and also software support for other Android devices is going better). Therefore, I cannot dabble into the Apple Watch ecosystem either. And you know what, it actually seems like a neat device (sans the repairability). And I am also a happy user of macOS and I know I'd like tvOS just as well as my Nvidia Shield (who forced ads down my throat in an Android update and pointed fingers at Google).
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  Google also aren't helping it by keeping it closed source. Android being partly open source was one of the major drivers of it's adoption. (Ironically Tizen was open source)
- ncruces 3y ago
  After years of Qualcomm not updating its wearable chips and keeping them on 22nm, Samsung had exclusive first dibs access to its own 5nm chip. A new version of Android was built that required newer chips, and that's what it took for Qualcomm to finally release something worth it. The first Pixel Watch had a Samsung Exynos, Pixel Watch 2 a Qualcomm chipset.
malfist 3y ago
How do you define a "most consistent OEM"? I see this article is written by Ars' Ron Amadeo. He's nothing more than a clickbait muckraker.
- vdaea 3y ago
  Have you read the article? Because it explains it pretty well.
dangus 3y ago
Fossil has a brand equity problem that Google certainly knows about. The brand peaked before the smartwatch market even existed, and their smartwatch sales peaked almost 10 years ago. Fossil Group’s traditional watches including vanity labels like Michael Kors are completely lacking in prestige and desirability. I would also throw them straight under the bus with Samsung as my alternative. That’s a no-brainer. The other problem is that the smartwatch market isn’t robust enough for a lot of players. A good smartwatch needs a lot of tech that only a large company can produce. At the same time, it’s not really a product with a lot of future potential above and beyond what it does right now.
- moritonal 3y ago
  I would argue with that slightly. Only because I'm awaiting a GPT powered watch similar to a sci-fi terminal any day now. No screen, just microphone and some response mechanism.
  - dangus 3y ago
    That concept is just an app or an OS feature on an Apple Watch or a smartphone (with or without wireless headphone/mic). It’s Siri whenever Siri gets hooked up to a LLM, which will probably happen within the next year or two. I’m not sure why this idea would take the form of a watch. The reason why watches still have faces is: 1. To be fashionable 2. To see the time and other information quickly without speaking Otherwise, there is no reason to buy one. The “smart” in the smartwatch is frosting on top of the cake. The “cake” is the watch’s main function as jewelry that tells time.
    - kalleboo 3y ago
      People all stopped wearing watches when they got phones because they didn't need the time on their wrist constantly. Now they want notifications on their wrist constantly, that's what the cake of the smartwatch is, not the time. And the Apple Watch is ugly as hell, it's no jewelry.
      - 3y ago
devn0ll 3y ago
Loved the watches, hated their "forced upon you" software. I want wearOS, I already have android, I _do not_ want to _have_ to install you shitty crappy software with forced account creation, etc.. Running in the background of my phone, doing whatever. Constantly monitoring where I am, etc. *HATE IT*. But Fossil hardware with JUST wearOS would be great! I hope it comes in the future. (Ye gods I hate their software. Was it obvious I hate their software?)
Lazonedo 3y ago
I'm not very convinced of the utility of smart watches, at least not the wear os incarnations - I will not make a generic statement because I have no way to know if I would like the Apple Watches and I am not willing to buy an iPhone to get one. I have a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and it's.. alright. I mean, the software works smoothly, I don't have any complaints to make in terms of defective behavior or UI. But past the time of novelty I barely use it as a smart watch. Just a watch I charge every day and which I won't replace once the battery ages too much or it breaks. I'll go back to a regular casio at that time. It works for checking notifications but in many cases I'll want to do something after a notification (like, if I get a message, most likely I'll want to answer it, at which point I am going back on the phone where typing is comfortable, and what value did the watch provide?) It doesn't add anything to some of my physical activities the phone didn't do - like tracking my bike rides on a map, and when I want to look at past results I'll also be using the phone - a bigger screen is always better. Tracking my heart rate - one of the watch exclusives - hasn't changed anything to my life. Anyhow, I will always be taking my phone with me anywhere I go, so the watch feels quite redundant. It can do things without having to take my phone out of the pocket, but do them worse for the most part. I'm sure Fossil's bad deals with Google and the rise of Samsung contributed to their ills, but I also have a feeling this is a market that will have very little user retention in the long term. People buy their first smart watch and then might not decide to get another one ever. Unless they find a way to severely ramp up the utility in a way that can convince a large amount of people.
- Scubabear68 3y ago
  I didn't think I'd find my Apple watch very useful, but it actually is. In situations where it may be awkward to take out (or even carry) your phone, the watch can act as a mini-phone. Going on runs without a phone is very liberating, while retaining the ability to track your run and stream music to Airpods. It does a decent job of tracking pool swims as well, thanks to being waterproof. Not life-changing, but adding enough convenience to be worth it.
  - dawnofdusk 3y ago
    For runners and other athletes (depending on the sport), it seems fairly useful. I struggle to think of other use cases that justify it. Obviously, a smart watch is strictly better than a regular watch in the sense that it has more features, but I think the downside of having to charge it so regularly makes the value-add not worth it. I am always sad about the downfall of Pebble watches, because the e-ink screens were excellent and gave you a watch that rarely needed to be charged and still gave the benefits of a smart watch (however small they may be).
londons_explore 3y ago
Neither apple nor google smartwatches have easy enoughUX for things I do often. Eg. Someone Whatsapps me 'Can I get that bag back I left at your house", I want to reply with "Sure, I'll be home around 6pm". I could get my phone out to reply. It will take about 10 seconds (1 to get phone out of pocket, 1 for finger unlock, 1 to open the notification tray, 1 to tap the notification and wait while the tray slides closed and the keyboard slides up, 5 to type the message and hit send, 1 to return the phone to my pocket). Or... I could use my watch with voice typing. But the watch still takes around 10 seconds when you deal with the fact I need to confirm the message and the voice typing is laggy and sometimes needs to be done twice. Just fix the UX so common tasks can be done in 4 seconds or less and I'd use it. It should be a physical button I press and hold, say "reply saying I'll be home at 6pm", release the button, and it should automatically reply to the notification that just came in and should be all done within 4 seconds (3 seconds of speaking, 1 to lift the watch to the mouth and press the button).
- infotainment 3y ago
  If you ever used a Pebble watch with an Android phone, it was almost the experience you describe. It’s really a shame that company died.
  - htrp 3y ago
    bought by fitbit who was bought by google
    - infotainment 3y ago
      Yup, and Fitbit used essentially nothing from Pebble; it was basically an accquihire. They should have just rebranded Pebble’s lineup as Fitbits, IMO.
- Loggias 3y ago
  [dead]
- londons_explore 3y ago
vardump 3y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39150786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39150786
pcdoodle 3y ago
I like fossil as a brand. They've been doing smart watches since the PalmOS abacus. Some of our younger employees also wear the non smart versions. Bummer all around. I would never give Samsung my money. They're too slimy.
vanous 3y ago
For the Hybrids, get your secret key while the servers are still up, without it, it's a paperweight. https://gadgetbridge.org/basics/pairing/fossil-server/ https://gadgetbridge.org/basics/pairing/fossil-server/

47 points by ramn7 3y ago

It's a real shame because the platform is really starting to get good. > Google lured Samsung away from its in-house Tizen OS with preferential treatment, including exclusive rights to the new "Wear OS 3" release and exclusive apps. That year, 2021, featured head-to-head August Wear OS releases of Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 and Fossil's Gen 6 smartwatch. Samsung's watch had a faster, Samsung-made SoC, ran Wear OS 3, and cost $250, while Fossil was stuck with Wear OS 2, a slower Qualcomm chip, and a $300 price tag. It sounds like Google really did sabotage them and they have a right to be upset.

dangus 3y ago
I disagree. Their smartwatch sales peaked almost 10 years ago. Fossil is a declining brand relative to its traditional watch peers as well. That kind of thing only happens thanks to long-term mismanagement that Fossil can only blame itself for. They’re a company that any businessperson would throw under the bus to court Samsung.
- partitioned 3y ago
  At this point the company is a fossil
rjzzleep 3y ago
Another thing to mention is that Qualcomm had zero incentive to make something good for wearables. It's an unfortunate side effect of having such an absolute market dominating position.
kotaKat 3y ago
Google sabotaged the entire product with the Samsung partnership. I watched people abandon Wear OS both from the hardware front and the software front because of the fragmentation of the platform. It doesn't help that Google continued to have no fucking clue what they wanted to do with Fitbit in the meantime and still feels like they don't have a clue.
- doublepg23 3y ago
  > It doesn't help that Google continued to have no fucking clue what they wanted to do with Fitbit in the meantime and still feels like they don't have a clue. Sounds like Google for the past decade.
PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
Google sabotaged the entire WearOS platform, they gave the market to Apple on a silver plate. Lack of updates, not treating it as a first class platform, etc
- Fnoord 3y ago
  Apple? I mean, I don't have an iPhone, so it is pointless to have an Apple Watch, right?
  - PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
    No but I wouldn't be shocked if compatible watches influences people's choice of smartphone, it did for me.
    - Fnoord 3y ago
      Well, an iPhone. How marvelous. I cannot even replace the battery or screen in 5 minutes. I have an Android smartphone which is easy to repair (Fairphone). It is a dealbreaker for me (although I'm glad Apple have been improving lately, and also software support for other Android devices is going better). Therefore, I cannot dabble into the Apple Watch ecosystem either. And you know what, it actually seems like a neat device (sans the repairability). And I am also a happy user of macOS and I know I'd like tvOS just as well as my Nvidia Shield (who forced ads down my throat in an Android update and pointed fingers at Google).
RobotToaster 3y ago
Google also aren't helping it by keeping it closed source. Android being partly open source was one of the major drivers of it's adoption. (Ironically Tizen was open source)
ncruces 3y ago
After years of Qualcomm not updating its wearable chips and keeping them on 22nm, Samsung had exclusive first dibs access to its own 5nm chip. A new version of Android was built that required newer chips, and that's what it took for Qualcomm to finally release something worth it. The first Pixel Watch had a Samsung Exynos, Pixel Watch 2 a Qualcomm chipset.

malfist 3y ago

How do you define a "most consistent OEM"? I see this article is written by Ars' Ron Amadeo. He's nothing more than a clickbait muckraker.

vdaea 3y ago
Have you read the article? Because it explains it pretty well.

dangus 3y ago

Fossil has a brand equity problem that Google certainly knows about. The brand peaked before the smartwatch market even existed, and their smartwatch sales peaked almost 10 years ago. Fossil Group’s traditional watches including vanity labels like Michael Kors are completely lacking in prestige and desirability. I would also throw them straight under the bus with Samsung as my alternative. That’s a no-brainer. The other problem is that the smartwatch market isn’t robust enough for a lot of players. A good smartwatch needs a lot of tech that only a large company can produce. At the same time, it’s not really a product with a lot of future potential above and beyond what it does right now.

moritonal 3y ago
I would argue with that slightly. Only because I'm awaiting a GPT powered watch similar to a sci-fi terminal any day now. No screen, just microphone and some response mechanism.
- dangus 3y ago
  That concept is just an app or an OS feature on an Apple Watch or a smartphone (with or without wireless headphone/mic). It’s Siri whenever Siri gets hooked up to a LLM, which will probably happen within the next year or two. I’m not sure why this idea would take the form of a watch. The reason why watches still have faces is: 1. To be fashionable 2. To see the time and other information quickly without speaking Otherwise, there is no reason to buy one. The “smart” in the smartwatch is frosting on top of the cake. The “cake” is the watch’s main function as jewelry that tells time.
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    People all stopped wearing watches when they got phones because they didn't need the time on their wrist constantly. Now they want notifications on their wrist constantly, that's what the cake of the smartwatch is, not the time. And the Apple Watch is ugly as hell, it's no jewelry.
    - 3y ago

devn0ll 3y ago

Loved the watches, hated their "forced upon you" software. I want wearOS, I already have android, I _do not_ want to _have_ to install you shitty crappy software with forced account creation, etc.. Running in the background of my phone, doing whatever. Constantly monitoring where I am, etc. *HATE IT*. But Fossil hardware with JUST wearOS would be great! I hope it comes in the future. (Ye gods I hate their software. Was it obvious I hate their software?)

Lazonedo 3y ago

I'm not very convinced of the utility of smart watches, at least not the wear os incarnations - I will not make a generic statement because I have no way to know if I would like the Apple Watches and I am not willing to buy an iPhone to get one. I have a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and it's.. alright. I mean, the software works smoothly, I don't have any complaints to make in terms of defective behavior or UI. But past the time of novelty I barely use it as a smart watch. Just a watch I charge every day and which I won't replace once the battery ages too much or it breaks. I'll go back to a regular casio at that time. It works for checking notifications but in many cases I'll want to do something after a notification (like, if I get a message, most likely I'll want to answer it, at which point I am going back on the phone where typing is comfortable, and what value did the watch provide?) It doesn't add anything to some of my physical activities the phone didn't do - like tracking my bike rides on a map, and when I want to look at past results I'll also be using the phone - a bigger screen is always better. Tracking my heart rate - one of the watch exclusives - hasn't changed anything to my life. Anyhow, I will always be taking my phone with me anywhere I go, so the watch feels quite redundant. It can do things without having to take my phone out of the pocket, but do them worse for the most part. I'm sure Fossil's bad deals with Google and the rise of Samsung contributed to their ills, but I also have a feeling this is a market that will have very little user retention in the long term. People buy their first smart watch and then might not decide to get another one ever. Unless they find a way to severely ramp up the utility in a way that can convince a large amount of people.

Scubabear68 3y ago
I didn't think I'd find my Apple watch very useful, but it actually is. In situations where it may be awkward to take out (or even carry) your phone, the watch can act as a mini-phone. Going on runs without a phone is very liberating, while retaining the ability to track your run and stream music to Airpods. It does a decent job of tracking pool swims as well, thanks to being waterproof. Not life-changing, but adding enough convenience to be worth it.
- dawnofdusk 3y ago
  For runners and other athletes (depending on the sport), it seems fairly useful. I struggle to think of other use cases that justify it. Obviously, a smart watch is strictly better than a regular watch in the sense that it has more features, but I think the downside of having to charge it so regularly makes the value-add not worth it. I am always sad about the downfall of Pebble watches, because the e-ink screens were excellent and gave you a watch that rarely needed to be charged and still gave the benefits of a smart watch (however small they may be).

londons_explore 3y ago

Neither apple nor google smartwatches have easy enoughUX for things I do often. Eg. Someone Whatsapps me 'Can I get that bag back I left at your house", I want to reply with "Sure, I'll be home around 6pm". I could get my phone out to reply. It will take about 10 seconds (1 to get phone out of pocket, 1 for finger unlock, 1 to open the notification tray, 1 to tap the notification and wait while the tray slides closed and the keyboard slides up, 5 to type the message and hit send, 1 to return the phone to my pocket). Or... I could use my watch with voice typing. But the watch still takes around 10 seconds when you deal with the fact I need to confirm the message and the voice typing is laggy and sometimes needs to be done twice. Just fix the UX so common tasks can be done in 4 seconds or less and I'd use it. It should be a physical button I press and hold, say "reply saying I'll be home at 6pm", release the button, and it should automatically reply to the notification that just came in and should be all done within 4 seconds (3 seconds of speaking, 1 to lift the watch to the mouth and press the button).

infotainment 3y ago
If you ever used a Pebble watch with an Android phone, it was almost the experience you describe. It’s really a shame that company died.
- htrp 3y ago
  bought by fitbit who was bought by google
  - infotainment 3y ago
    Yup, and Fitbit used essentially nothing from Pebble; it was basically an accquihire. They should have just rebranded Pebble’s lineup as Fitbits, IMO.
Loggias 3y ago
[dead]
londons_explore 3y ago

vardump 3y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39150786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39150786

pcdoodle 3y ago

I like fossil as a brand. They've been doing smart watches since the PalmOS abacus. Some of our younger employees also wear the non smart versions. Bummer all around. I would never give Samsung my money. They're too slimy.

vanous 3y ago

For the Hybrids, get your secret key while the servers are still up, without it, it's a paperweight. https://gadgetbridge.org/basics/pairing/fossil-server/ https://gadgetbridge.org/basics/pairing/fossil-server/