Swatch to launch smartwatch in a couple of months: Report

Swatch will launch a smart watch in the next two to three months, the Swiss watchmaker said on Thursday. A spokesman for Swatch confirmed Chief Executive Nick Hayek made the remarks to Bloomberg earlier on Thursday. Asked how much of a concern the smart watch from Apple was to the Swiss company, Hayek also told CNBC that Swatch had already been in the smart watch market for a long time but did not give detail on its plans for a new product. Last year, Swatch had said it looks at the advent of smartwatches as an opportunity rather than a threat, and will unveil the Swatch Touch by summer 2015. Reports also suggested that the possibility of an iWatch launch was partly responsible for Swatch shares losing almost 15 percent last year by September, lagging a 3 percent rise in the European sector. This means Swatch and Apple watches may hit markets around the same time. The Apple Watch is expected to hit stores only in April. The Apple Watch sports a squarish design instead of a circular one popularised by Motorola’s Moto 360. The Watch is crafted from custom alloys of polished or space black stainless steel (Apple Watch), space gray or silver anodized aluminum (Apple Watch Sport) and 18-karat rose or yellow gold (Apple Watch Edition). With inputs from Reuters