Google, TAG Heuer And Intel Team Up To Take On Apple Watch

Swiss luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer said on Thursday (March 19) that it will team with Google and Intel to create its first smartwatch. But though the device will undoubtedly compete with the Apple Watch, the TAG Heuer announcement at the Baselworld 2015 watch trade show pointedly avoided mentioning either price or features — including whether the watch will handle payments.

“We are not presenting the watch today,” TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver told a press conference. “We are presenting the watch [at the] end of the year. Today we will not reveal any price, we will not reveal any functions. We are just revealing the most important thing, our partnership, because without this partnership nothing could happen.”

That would put the TAG Heuer watch on the market at least six months after the April 24 debut of the Apple Watch’s high-end version. That delay didn’t appear to worry the watch company. “Swiss watchmaking and Silicon Valley is a marriage of technological innovation with watchmaking credibility,” Biver said.

David Singleton, Google’s Director of Engineering for Android Wear, and Michael Bell, the general manager of Intel’s New Devices Group, were also tight-lipped about what the new watch might do. The two companies are already collaborating on smart-glasses technology, and fashion eyeglass designer Luxottica said in December it will work with Intel to make a more stylish line of “smart glasses” than Google’s notoriously geeky Google Glass.

But other companies weren’t quite so reticent about their smartwatch plans. Gucci announced its own “smartband” on Thursday, Vogue reported, showing a device designed in partnership with rapper will.i.am. The Gucci wearable will have the ability to make and receive phone calls, text messages and emails (without requiring a separate smartphone), play music, and track both appointments and fitness — although Gucci still didn’t mention pricing, availability or whether the band would be able to do payments.

And several luxury watchmakers at the Baselworld show were very specific about their smart wearables plans: They don’t have any. Executives from Hermes, Patek Philippe, and the Swatch-owned Breguet, Jaquet Droz and Blancpain brands all said they weren’t working on the devices. “The Apple Watch is not a real watch but a consumer electronic,” Swatch executive Marc Hayek told Reuters at the show.