Fossil ceases production of smartwatches, marking the most frequent OEM departure from Wear OS

For many years, Fossil was the only company sustaining Google's Wear OS; however, the fashion brand is currently leaving the smartwatch industry. Assuring The Verge just before the weekend, the company said, "We have made the strategic decision to exit the smartwatch business." The company says that while it refocuses on traditional watches and jewelry, existing smartwatches will receive software updates "for the next few years."

Though Wear OS is no longer in the dark, Fossil served as the OS's only savior for many years. Fossil was the only startup that maintained the dream when Qualcomm was choking the operating system with mediocre SoC updates. Since Fossil entered the Android Wear/Wear OS market in 2015, there hasn't been a reliable supplier of Android wristwatch hardware. The major players, including Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei, Motorola, and Asus, produced timepieces for a year or two before going out of business.

Even though Fossil had been a part of the Wear OS ecosystem for years, Google dropped Fossil like a rock in 2021. Privileges such as exclusive rights to the upcoming "Wear OS 3" release and apps were used by Google to entice Samsung to switch from its proprietary Tizen OS. Fossil's Gen 6 smartwatch and Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 saw head-to-head Wear OS releases in August of that year (2021). If Fossil was forced to use Wear OS 2, a slower Qualcomm chip, and a $300 price tag, Samsung's watch boasted a faster SoC manufactured by Samsung and ran Wear OS 3. When you factor in Samsung's exclusive chips and Google's preferential treatment, Fossil's watches would hardly be able to compete with Samsung on an even playing field. Its final smartwatch release, the Gen 6, will occur.

Fossil never saw significant sales during those years of release. Francisco Jeronimo, the vice president of data and analytics at IDC, disclosed that Fossil only sold 19 million smartwatches, or 2.2 percent of the total market, between 2015 and 2023, and that its market share peaked in 2015 at 6.7 percent. According to Jeronimo, Apple shipped 248 million watches during that eight-year period.