Google Paid Rs 280 Crore For A Mystery Smartwatch Technology

Google recently acquired some R&D employees and intellectual property (IP) related to a smartwatch technology from Fossil Group, an American fashion designer and manufacturer. The move is seen as the effort by the company to make Wear OS, its wearable platform, to rival the Apple Watch. Reportedly,  Fossil's smartwatch IP along with its part R&D team has been bought for a purchase price of nearly Rs. 280 crore (roughly $40 million).

On the part of Fossil, the company says that they still keep more than 200 employees of its R&D team. The company said:

As the tech giant doesn't share granular detail about their deal, it isn't clear exactly how many employees are transferred to Google.

According to Wareables, Fossil's chief strategy and digital officer Greg McKelvey says that this agreement will lead to a marked improvement in product development. McKelvey said in an interview with Wareables:

Moreover, McKelvey added that the acquisition of the maker of wearable activity trackers, Misfit for $260 million at the end of 2015 has also led to innovate in its technology.

Wear OS

According to the chief of Google’s Wear OS vice president of Product Management, Stacey Burr, Google realized the great potential of the technology that Fossil was developing and the search giant also believed that they may further expand the technology in its own platform. She also added:

Alongside fashion brand Fossil, Google also provides its Wear OS to other companies like Tag Heuer, Movado, and LG to use in their offerings.

Although Google has never made its own smartwatch, the deal partially indicates that Google was about to enter the wearables market in the near future.