First ‘Swiss made’ smartwatch to make its debut
Swiss watchmaker Tissot will release a connected watch model in September that features an operating system developed in Switzerland.
The Tissot T-Touch Connect Solar watch is powered by solar cells and almost all parts of the watch, apart from the bracelet, are produced in Switzerland. The biggest breakthrough is its “Swiss made” operating system.
It took four years of work and an investment of CHF30 million ($33 million) to develop. Around 30 experts at the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) in Neuchâtel worked on the “ultra-low power” operating system that was designed to use minimal battery power. It enables Swiss watch brands to do without the services of Google (Android) or Apple (Watch OS) in order to offer connected services.
The data used in the watch will be managed by a Swiss group and will not end up in the hands of Google, Apple or Huawei. However, the Swiss watch is compatible and can communicate with the three main app providers.
However, the Tissot connected watch offers very little functionality, as it only displays notifications in a relatively small area at the bottom of the screen. But the operating system is scalable and could manage a multitude of other data such as location, route and temperature if ad hoc sensors were to be provided in another model.
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