The IWC Connect preserves traditional watchmaking by placing smarts on band

Traditional watchmakers are slowly entering the smartwatch market, but many are doing so from a particular point of view — one where the digital guts are placed on the watch’s strap rather than face.

IWC Schaffhausen announced on Tuesday its plans for a new device called the IWC Connect. The Swiss company is declaring outright that the Connect is not a smartwatch. Rather, it’s an “intelligent tool” that can be affixed to existing IWC mechanical watches “to track the wearer’s activities” and “interact with connected devices in their environment.”

The device has great potential to serve the portion of the potential market that isn’t convinced it needs a smartwatch. With the IWC Connect, someone can sustain their predilection for analog design and simultaneously take advantage of the quantified data wearables can collect.

“Seeing that many of our customers and brand ambassadors are wearing connected devices alongside their IWC watches, we chose to work with a like-minded digital technology company to develop an elegant, aesthetically complementary solution that eliminates the need to have additional devices on the opposing wrist to your IWC,” IWC CEO Georges Kern said.

“But, and this is essential, we do not touch our beautiful watches – an ‘IWC’ stays a mechanical handcrafted timepiece. We’ve engineered an intelligent design solution which perfectly integrates and underlines our product worlds.”

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