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

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/fossil-smartwatches-go-extinct-company-quits-wear-os-ecosystem/

by ramn7 • 2 years ago

47 44 2 years ago

freedomben• 2 years 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.

dangus5• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

At this point the company is a fossil

rjzzleep• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

PlutoIsAPlanet2• 2 years 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

Fnoord2• 2 years ago

Apple? I mean, I don't have an iPhone, so it is pointless to have an Apple Watch, right?

RobotToaster2• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

Have you read the article? Because it explains it pretty well.

dangus5• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

dangus5• 2 years 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.

papichulo4• 2 years ago

I thought this was the future, too, but I think there has to be a shared display that you can relay/validate the output together (with the GPT) on. It has to be able to draw a thing, quickly, show you what it's thinking -- voice is too slow to be the single medium of interaction.

RobotToaster2• 2 years ago

I wonder why google are taking so long to integrate bard with assistant?

Seems like a no brainer move.

devn0ll• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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).

marcus0x622• 2 years ago

I've worn a Garmin smart watch for the last two years, exclusively for activity and sleep tracking benefits. I was an Apple Watch wearer for years (pre-ordered a Series 1 way back when.)

The apple watch, for me, was too distracting. Too many notifications, too much temptation to glance at the watch during meetings, during dinner, etc. I ended up selling the latest one I had and going back to dumb watches for a while. I felt phantom notifications on my wrist for about two weeks after I got rid of the Apple Watch.

So, when I decided to get a Garmin, I bought the dumbest smart watch they had (Instinct Solar 2) that could do activity/GPS tracking and never turned on message notifications, etc. I did enable their Garmin Pay thing and linked it to a card, because I usually run without my phone, and figured it might be handy to be able to stop by a coffee shop or something.

Anyway, smart watches are terrible.

liendolucas• 2 years ago

One of the things I never understood is what do you do with information such as heart rate, sleep quality, total steps you made, and so on... What is the use of all that? One of my brothers asked me a few months ago if he should buy a smart watch and I told him "what for, what are you going to get from it?"... He then acknowledged that I was kind of right. Just suggested him to use an old casio watch and what he probably needed was just a simple chronometer. That's the only metric I have been using when going out for a run. I can't possibly see what's the benefit of other metrics offered by smartwatches. And they have the disadvantage that you need to regularly recharge them.

marcus0x622• 2 years ago

You use the information to monitor and guide your training, for one thing. A lot has been made about how smart watches aren't particularly accurate when measuring things like sleep or HRV (as compared to laboratory equipment,) but there is a kind of stochastic reliability good personal monitors provide. When my garmin watch says I'm fatigued (because of low HRV) or haven't been sleeping well, I see a difference in my athletic performance and can adjust accordingly to avoid injury.

It may not be super accurate at monitoring HRV, and might not even really be monitoring HRV, but it is monitoring something that correlates highly to how I feel and am likely to perform.

amarant• 2 years ago

This is pretty much my view of smart watches too. The way I see it, the coupling with the phone removes the purpose of the watch.

I'll elaborate a bit: current smart watches seem to work a bit like a remote control for my phone: There's a Spotify app for wear os, but it only works if the watch is connected to the phone via Bluetooth, which means I have to bring the phone. Similarly, I can take phonecalls from my watch, but only if the phone is within Bluetooth reach.

I'm not sure why I need a remote control for something that has to be in my pocket anyway..

If the watch was more independent, it would be more useful. There are times when I don't want a bulky phone in my pocket, but a watch on my wrist is acceptable. Mostly various sport activities.

What would make a smart watch useful in my opinion is the following:

1. SIM card(preferably digital) so the watch has it's own data.

2. The ability to "disable" my phone so that all notifications and calls are forwarded automatically to my watch, even when the watch is not within range of the phone(this is gonna be a challenge technically, godspeed any engineer who tackles this)

3. "Full" apps, that work independently from the phone, so that my watch can in standalone do things like play music(probably via Bluetooth headphones) accept phonecalls, and bonus points if it can make phonecalls via voice control.

Once I can leave the phone at home and replace it temporarily with my watch, the watch will be useful to me.

phicoh• 2 years ago

For me, there are regularly situations that I get a message on my phone but it is not convenient to get out the phone. Looking at the watch is then quite handy. Similarly in a noisy environment I sometimes miss a notification. The buzz of the watch is nice.

Navigating with a phone always feels a clumsy. I find that also more convenient with a watch.

When it comes to heart rate, it is just convenient that the watch can constantly monitor heart rate, stress, etc. Sometimes you feel a bit off an wonder why. If HRV is suddenly lower then it might be good to avoid a hard training session.

londons_explore3• 2 years 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).

infotainment2• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

bought by fitbit who was bought by google

londons_explore3• 2 years ago

Even if they can't get the voice recognition good enough, they could at least send the text and sound clip to the other person so any recognition inaccuracies don't get in the way of conversation.

ghaff2• 2 years ago

I wear my Apple Watch for hiking. But I have almost all notifications disabled, I don't really care about quantified self sort of data, voice input isn't reliable enough, etc. The tradeoffs mostly aren't there vs. a watch that tells me the time and I never need to charge.

londons_explore3• 2 years ago

I don't really care about quantified self sort of data,

Same here... I really don't understand why everyone cares about their heart rate or how many steps they've done today.... Like how is that helping my life? I might as well start measuring how many millimeters my fingernails grow each week and have a fingernail-growth-race...

vardump• 2 years ago

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

pcdoodle• 2 years 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• 2 years 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/

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

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