Q Sera Sera — Fossil Challenges The Wearables Market

In what can be seen as natural evolution for Fossil, an American company having their own clothing line and a portfolio of luxury accessories consisting of watches and jewellery, the simmering world of Wearables beckons.

News has it that they’ve tied up with Intel, and are now ready to launch their view on a Wearables collection.

Titled Fossil Q, this is actually a completely different take on the connected lifestyle. Let’s start from the top…

Q is Fossil’s line of Connected Accessories. It currently includes a connected watch (not a typical smartwatch) called Q Grant, two versions of activity tracker bracelets called Q Reveler and Q Dreamer; and a custom-built App which is the fulcrum of Q’s diaspora.

The fourth of the family — Fossil intends to introduce a full-blown, smartwatch in a few months. Called the Q Founder, we believe this Android Wear based smartwatch will emerge as being the flagship device of the cumulative lineup.

So how does all this come together? Well, interestingly.

Q Grant

The watch, Grant, while bearing a classic analogue Fossil sports watch dial, actually connects up with your smartphone (Android or iOS), to monitor and transmit notifications from it, intelligently and selectively. The non-display watch (as they call it) also monitors calorie intake, steps taken and all-day activity — so its a fitness tracker of sorts too.

Alerts happen via vibration or flashing of LEDs discretely placed around the watch case. These LEDs can be colours-customised to differentiate across notification types. The Q Grant will be priced between $175 and $195.

Q Reveler and Q Dreamer

Q’s activity tracker bracelets, called Reveler (for men) and Dreamer (for the ladies), discretely track fitness and activity. They too, provide notifications from apps (via vibrations) on your smartphone.
While they are entry level fitness trackers, they are available in different styles of elegant bracelets, with choices between — Sand Leather, Stainless Steel, Black Leather, and Dark Brown. This sub-series of Q will cost around $125.

The Grant and the two fitness bands feature swappable bands, so you can accessorise as you desire from eight options available.

Tying all of the new Q connected devices, will be Fossil’s proprietary smartphone app.
It handles three things — personalising the choice of notifications and their respective LED colours/vibration, displaying your activity information in a simple infographic on your smartphone, and also trigger random fun activities to get you moving and to play discovery of the world around you.

The devices will additionally be compatible to sync with popular fitness apps like Google Fit, Health and UP by Jawbone, so you can do more with your activity data from those sources too!

Q Founder

The full-blown smartwatch, the Q Founder will be able to provide all the usual smartwatch functions enabled by Android Wear — notifications about calls, text messages, emails, calendar events and of course, app notifications. Apparently, it will also be able to provide information regarding weather, sporting events, traffic — all on the round, digital watch face display. The Founder will set you back around $275.

All of Q’s family are compatible with Android smartphones running 4.3 JellyBean and higher, and iPhone 5 and above. They rely on Bluetooth 4.1 for connectivity, are all powered by Intel processors and will feature wireless charging.

The Wearables market is growing at such a phenomenal pace that everyone wants a piece of it. But most of the usual tech giants are doing the usual things. What stands out for Fossil, is that they’re trying to meld technology into fashion pieces, not the other way around. Their propositions still talk to who you are as a person, because unannounced, most of the world wouldn’t even spot these as Wearables!

Fossil’s bringing the tough game to the park now, and the good part is that all those tech giants so far vying for a piece of the pie will be forced to up their game and learn a thing or two from luxury brands. Which is immensely portentous for us customers.

That said, while the Wearables market currently seems lucrative, however when the dust settles, we may have just a few competent players left standing — will the Fossil team be there then — has yet to seen. But they’re off to a good start, given their approach. Fossil’s splash is already causing the right ripples — it was announced that Fossil will also make connected watches for Kate Spade and Michael Kors as well!

Well, here’s wishing Fossil and their Q the very best of luck!

Originally published at Chip-Monks.