Fossil is discontinuing smart watches

Fossil Group has decided to stop making smart watches.

The company announced this afternoon that it will exit the smartwatch business and redirect resources to its less smart merchandise instead. The company has been one of the most popular manufacturers of Wear OS smartwatches over the years, and its absence will leave a huge gap in the market.

“As the smartwatch landscape has evolved significantly over the past few years, we have made a strategic decision to exit the smartwatch business,” said Amanda Castelli, a Fossil spokeswoman. the edge. “The Fossil Group is redirecting resources to support our core strength and core segments of our business that continue to provide us with strong growth opportunities: the design and distribution of exciting traditional watches, jewelry and leather goods under our own brand names as well as licensed ones.”

This means that the Gen 6, which debuted in 2021, will be Fossil's last smartwatch. Castelli says the company will continue to update existing Wear OS watches “for the next few years.”

This shouldn't come as a huge shock if you've been paying attention to Fossil over the past few months. some Reddit Users have been reporting Fossil retail employees saying Fossil is going out of business, while others on the platform claim to have “inside” knowledge that the company was… Waiting for new slides. The company regularly rolled out smartwatches during Wear OS's toughest years and were often a fixture at CES. However, the company was noticeably absent from the show earlier this month. Furthermore, Fossil was expected to announce news of a new 7G featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Plus platform in 2023, however, it has been nothing but crickets all year. Well, now we know why.