Right at the start of this year, we have come across some big announcements by Texas-based fashion brand Fossil Group. The company revealed its big plan in CES 2022 where it confirmed the introduction of Alexa to its latest Fossil Gen 6 Series watches.
Here is what the company has to say:
“Alexa will be launching in the first half of this year on our Gen 6 devices, with the opportunity to roll out on future devices. We’ll have more information closer to launch!”
Fossil has not said if it plans to add Amazon’s Alexa to older models of its Gen 6 series. The company has still been earning handsomely from its Gen 5 Series watches that come with Wear 2.0. So there are fairly good chances that it would do so.
The recently released smartwatch by the sister company of Fossil, Skagen Falster 6, has even a tile for ALEXA, but the functionality has not been added yet. All you can get is a “Comming Soon” message as you tap on this tile. However, this tile is a reassurance that the Faslter 6 would be the very first watch to get ALEXA.
As Fossil gears up to add Alexa support to its Gen 6 smartwatch, many people are wondering what this means for the future of voice assistants on wearables. With Apple Watches being Siri-only and Wear OS watches only having Google Assistant, Fossil’s move to support Amazon Alexa gives customers a choice in what assistant they use.
Though Fossil will be a newcomer to this idea, there is another brand that offers the same in its smartwatches: Fitbit. As the acquirement deal between Google and Fitbit was in the process, Fitbit added Google Assistant as an alternative to Amazon Assistant to its Fitbit Versa 3 and Sense health watches.
Fossil confirmed that users would be able to get Alexa on all its Fossil Gen 6 Series watches by the mid or the second half of this year. But the company is notorious for pushing back dates. What happened to the Wear OS on Fossil Gen 6?
For those who don’t know the full story, let me give you a brief of this debacle. Google overhauled its Wear OS platform in partnership with Samsung, and last year we witnessed Galaxy Watch 4 and 4 Classic as the only two watches with this latest platform.
Fossil is a long-time partner of Google, all its watches run on Wear OS. The company disappointed its fan base by refusing to upgrade the old Wear OS in Gen 5 watches. However, it promised to introduce the latest OS in its Gen 6 series which never materialized. Fans might have to wait till mid of this year to get the Wear 3.0 on their Gen Series watches.
However, Fossil is not the only one that was unable to fulfill its promise. Mobvoi’s also promised Wear OS 3 on TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, TicWatch Pro 3 Cellular/LTE, TicWatch E3, and future models, and has been keeping its fan-base in waiting mode.