Puma partners with Fossil to build smartwatches

Puma has dabbled in phones, but that didn’t last long. Now the company wants to push into the smartwatch market and has signed a 10-year deal with Fossil, which will build and distribute Puma-branded wearables. The first watches will be available in late 2019.

“Puma is one of the world’s leading sports brands. We are excited to partner with them and bring our world class design and distribution capabilities to the Puma watch collection,” said Kosta Kartsotis, chief executive officer, Fossil Group.

Fossil is home to many brands, many of which have smartwatches of their own – Emporio Armani, Diesel, Misfit, Skagen and others. Interestingly Fossil also builds (non-smart) Adidas watches, there’s bound to be some rivalry there.

As to whether the Puma watch will run Android Wear or not, that’s hard to tell. Fossil does build Android-powered watches, but it also makes a good deal of hybrid watches. A step counter plus a goal dial and maybe a heart rate monitor would be enough to live up to Puma’s sporty image. We’ll have to wait and see.

Via