Hugo Boss has discontinued its first smartwatch the Boss Touch on watchshop.com. While the watch is still available on the company’s website, Movado Group, the maker of Boss Touch has confirmed the smartwatch is being phased out. While Movado didn’t give a reason for the discontinuation, one obvious reason could be poor sales, according to Wareable.
There’s no indication as to why Hugo Boss has chosen to end production on the Touch after launching less than a year ago, and currently there are no plans for a replacement to hit the market in the near future. Hugo Boss Touch went on sale in August 2017 after being announced at Baselworld 2017.
Read more Montblanc Introduces TWIN Smart Strap and Wireless Payment Platform
Baselworld, which is the top-notch assembly for watch and jewelry makers, wasn’t attended by Movado Group in this year’s edition of Baselworld 2018. The reason behind not attending the event was cited as that reason by Movado. Meanwhile, the company hasn’t clarified whether or not it will continue to provide software updates for the device.
The Boss Touch, priced at $395, was competitive when compared against other Android Wear 2.0 smartwatches launched in 2017. It was designed to look much more like any other luxury watch than the rest on the platform despite its tech-savvy features. It didn’t have a heart rate monitor but did feature NFC for mobile payments via providers like Android Pay. Its low sales may be due to the fact that it was launched alongside a large number of other smartwatches. Among those were at least one other smartwatch (also made by Movado) carrying Tommy-Hilfiger branding. The price tag on that watch was $100 less at retail but didn’t offer NFC.
Read more Consumers Continue to Shift Focus From Basic Wearables to Smarter Devices
Nearly 300 smartwatches were introduced at the show, including many made by Fossil. Fossil has had a decent amount of success in the market despite last year’s bumpy end to building wearables for itself and various other brands. Movado’s rivalry came from other manufacturers as well thanks to a rush of smartwatch makers from both the fashion and technology categories. As for now, Movado Group isn’t out of the market by any means. Furthermore, the lack of an announcement for a substitute to the Hugo Boss Touch doesn’t necessarily mean that no further Hugo Boss smartwatches are on the way.
