NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based Fossil Group is pushing deeper into the smartwatch market, as it seeks to diversify from the financially strapped traditional watch market. Among the apps Fossil is offering on several new smartwatch models are Google Pay and Alipay, the latter in China.
The new smartwatch models support Google Pay as a default feature running on Google’s Wear OS. But the payments service is limited, at present, to seven countries, in addition to China. Still, this could offer more competition to Apple Pay on Apple Watches, as the payments wearables market gathers steam following a slow start over the past couple of years.
In all, Fossil has introduced smartwatch and hybrid wearables to 14 of its brands, including those it licenses, and has plans to have 250 styles available this holiday shopping season, many of them introduced at this week’s IFA trade show in Berlin.