Tech connection
The advent of smart watches elicits swift but untested responses from Swiss watchmaking bigwigs.
N OTHING felt more incongruous than experiencing a slice of Silicon Valley at Switzerland's largest watch exposition. Upon arrival at BaselWorld 2015 in March, the annual watch fair where the biggest names in luxury watchmaking display their latest wares, one spies a large signboard on TAG Heuer's booth in the main exhibition hall. It was a simple but loaded declaration of intent. The signboard displayed nothing else, but the logos of TAG Heuer, Google and Intel.
Given the grounds gained by new-generation smartwatches over the past year, and the then-impending launch of Apple Watch, seeing TAG Heuer snuggle up to modern technology's biggest names was, while surprising, not at all unexpected.
As it turned out, the signboard was advertisement for a new "connected watch" that TAG Heuer is developing with the two tech giants. The brand's general manager, Guy Semon, while secretive about what the watch is about, is less coy about what it isn't.
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