Intel, Google Team Up With TAG Heuer for Luxury Smartwatch

Intel and Google are joining Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer to launch a luxury smartwatch by the end of the year

  

Intel and Google are joining Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer to design and launch a luxury smartwatch by the end of the year, the three companies announced on Thursday at the Baselworld Watch and Jewellery Show in Basel, Switzerland.

"Silicon Valley is Switzerland, Switzerland is Silicon Valley," TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver said at the start of a rollicking press conference that outlined how the new partners would create a watch that is "both luxurious, and seamlessly connected to its wearer's daily life" and finished with the ceremonial cutting of a 37-kilogram wheel of cheese from Biver's own farm.

"Swiss watchmaking and Silicon Valley is a marriage of technological innovation with watchmaking credibility. Our collaboration provides a rich host of synergies, forming a win-win partnership, and the potential for our three companies is enormous," Biver said in a statement.

The future, unnamed smartwatch will be powered by an Intel-designed chipset and run Android Wear, Google's modified version of its Android mobile operating system which is optimized for wearables. Pricing and availability were not announced, but Biver said the device could arrive any time between October and December.

TAG Heuer will design the watch itself, bringing the prestige and skill of Swiss watchmaking to the venture, but Biver noted that factors like where the future smartwatch is assembled and manufactured will likely mean it won't be certified as a "Swiss-made" timepiece.

For Intel and Google, the partnership will ideally give a needed boost to the two tech firms' early efforts to break into the wearables market.

Google has thrown its considerable promotional weight behind Android Wear in recent months—even debuting an Android Wear ad on the day of Apple's big Apple Watch unveiling earlier this month.

But Canalys recently reported that only 720,000 wearable devices running the Web giant's software made it to market in 2014, a year that saw a total of 4.6 million smart wearable bands shipped, according to the research firm.

Perhaps a Swiss-crafted Android Wear device matched up against Apple's opulent $10,000 smartwatch will boost Google's standing in the wearables world.