The Apple Watch has been dismissed as an “interesting toy” by the CEO of watch manufacturer Swatch, as it continues to fight against Apple. Outlining the future of the company’s smartwatch plans, Nick Hayek Jr. spoke against the currently-available smartwatches on the market, claiming them to be power-hungry devices that erodes the user’s privacy by uploading data to the cloud, and in the Apple Watch’s case, calling it “not a revolution.”
In an interview with the Tages-Anzeiger, The Guardian reports the CEO as saying
“These devices, which all eat so much power that they last no longer than 24 hours without needing to be plugged in. In addition, the user immediately loses control of their data. I personally don’t want my blood pressure and blood sugar values stored in the cloud, or on servers in Silicon Valley.”
As for its own smartwatch plans, Swatch is apparently using a “watch-first” design strategy, one that provides some smart functionality, but not at a level of other smartwatches. Payments over NFC are touted for one device set for release this year, along with allowing the potential watch to offer “access control.”
The recently-launched Touch Zero One was created as a device for volleyball players, providing distance tracking and measuring the amount of force used when hitting the ball, but the company is planning more. According to Reuters, the Touch Zero Two will be launched at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, with the possibility of a Zero Five or Zero Nine after that. Even so, fitness-tracking capabilities will be notably absent from the watches, with Hayek Jr. claiming he “cannot accept the responsibility of whether my device warns a customer in time before a heart attack.”
Last week, it was discovered Swatch had been granted a trademark on the term “one more thing,” a phrase commonly associated with Apple product launches presented by Steve Jobs. The trademark does not extend to the United States, limiting its usefulness, but Swatch has also previously declared it would fight any attempts to register “iWatch,” denying Apple the hypothetical trademark.
