Montblanc is the latest traditional watch manufacturer to enter the smartwatch market, which is for now led by Google, Samsung and Pebble.



Its new e-Strap attaches to a traditional analogue watch, turning it into a smartwatch with a screen that sits on the underside of the wrist to display alerts and notifications.

The 22mm-wide touchscreen connects to an iPhone or Android smartphone via Bluetooth and vibrates like any other smartwatch when alerts come in. It will also count streps, present music controls and is expected to last around five days on a single charge.

Announced before the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) 2015 watch trade show in Geneva, the €350 (£273) accessory is not Montblanc’s first foray into the world of technology, previously producing stylus accessories for Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 phablet.

‘Smartwatches as the evolution of the digital watch’

But along with similar moves from Swatch, Timex and Fossil, it shows that smartwatches are no longer just the domain of technology companies.

“We’ve seen interest in smartwatches from traditional watch manufacturers such as Fossil and Casio, which has G Shock models already available with Bluetooth connectivity,” Gartner research director Angela McIntyre explained to the Guardian.

The reason for that interest in connected watches is clear – the potential market for smartwatches is large.

“We could think of smartwatches as the evolution of the digital watch – they’ve been around for decades with a digital display, but now they have the capability to be connected,” explained McIntyre. “According to Statistics Brain, there are 1.2bn traditional watches sold every year and 23% of those are digital watches.”

“Even if just a small percentage of digital watches become connected, that’s a lot of smartwatches.”

‘Unsure of the benefits and relevance’

Technology companies, including Apple, which is set to join Google with a smartwatch in the spring, are already battling for a slice of the market. That riled traditional watch makers, who saw their watch faces easily replicated in the digital form.

Omega, Fossil, Armani, Michael Kors, Tissot, Swatch and Mondaine among others sent cease and desist notices to sites and developers offering faces thought to infringe on their copyright without permission in November.

Some watch manufacturers, including Timex and Fossil, have partnered with technology companies Qualcomm and Intel. Others including the world’s biggest watch manufacturer Swatch are going it alone, leaning on their existing expertise.

Expectations for smartwatches from both technology companies and traditional watch manufacturers are high around the world’s biggest electronics trade show CES in Las Vegas next week and SIHH 2015 in Geneva in the middle of January.

Whether watchmakers will finally be able to turn what is widely considered to be simply a gadget on the wrist into something more akin to current watches and jewellery remains to be seen. As it stands awareness of smartwatches is good, but ownership is low, with just 1% of Britons owning one, according to research by Ipsos Mori.

“Consumers are unsure of the benefits and relevance of the product, with nearly half (47%) saying that they didn’t see a need for them to have one, and 18% citing them as ‘gimmicks’,” Andrew Maguire, associate director at Ipsos Mori. “Just under a quarter - 24% - also mentioned the expense as a reason why they haven’t yet purchased one.”

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