INSIDER VIEW: Remembering the smartwatch Dutch tulip

I remember it like it was yesterday. I entered Hall 1 on the first day of Baselworld 2015, and I thought I’d taken a wrong turn.

In what was the Mecca of horology, I was suddenly surrounded by mini computer screens, calling themselves smartwatches.

Prompted by the launch of Apple Watch that same month, the goldrush had well and truly arrived, and the soaring market for picks and shovels was unfolding in front of our eyes.

But how much ‘gold’ was there in the goldrush if you weren’t Apple itself?

Brands from all across the watch spectrum pumped an extraordinary amount of money and resources into finding out on the job. The TAG Heuer Connected watch was touchscreen and used the Wear OS by Google. The technology was fledgling, and the other issue was that the exact same software was being used on fashion watches at a fraction of the price.

Arguably the most high profile example of these lower priced smartwatches was Fossil Group, which went all in on Wear OS, with almost all of its brand portfolio adopting pure smartwatch technology (i.e. touchscreen and connected to your phone).

The only problem? Apple Watch was a far superior smartwatch for tech fans, while traditional mechanical and quartz watches were far more popular for watch lovers. Smartwatches were the awkward in-between that felt squeezed out.

Confirmation of this, were it needed, has been the retreat from the smartwatch space of the brands that used to extol their virtues the most. After years of being the primary engine for Google’s Wear OS, Fossil’s total exit from the smartwatch market last year signalled the end of the “fashion tech” experiment. It was either an admission of defeat or a return to sanity. I choose to believe it was the latter.

It doesn’t mean that all those early adopters have abandoned the idea of incorporating tech into their product offering. For instance, the aforementioned TAG Heuer’s current Connected Calibre E5, released in late 2025, has “Made for iPhone” certification and the proprietary TAG Heuer OS, moving away from Google’s Wear OS.

But the goldrush that never was is now firmly in the rear view mirror. It was never quite a Dutch tulip, but it still feels surreal to me, as someone who was there in Basel to witness the herd mentality up close, that the watch industry briefly bet the house on computer watches being the future.