Noah Johnson 
Jan 27, 2024
Fossil has announced that it will no longer manufacture smartwatches based on Google's Wear OS.
Despite its discord with the search engine giant's operating system, the company has been making Wear OS smartwatches for many years and earned a place at the pinnacle in the realm of Wear OS during its "dark ages".
After joining the landscape of top-tier wearable technology in 2021 with its Wear OS 3, its debuting year, Fossil was outperformed by Samsung and Google’s own Pixel Watch.
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The most recent Wear OS offering of the company was the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition, which was viewed as a mediocre calibre wearable OS, as reported by The Verge.
Towards the end of last year, Fossil was discontinuing its remaining watches, and several models from Gen 6 were no longer available. During that time, there were rumours circulating that Fossil’s retail staff were suggesting that the company would not be launching any more smartwatches.
Fossil has stated that it has no plans to produce smartwatches in the future, including both its Wear OS watches and the "Hybrid" models that combined traditional watch features with e-paper displays.
The company has also mentioned that it will continue to provide support for its existing smartwatches "for the next few years." Last year, Fossil released its Wear OS 3.5 update, which unfortunately had numerous bugs.
Fossil Group's Wear OS offerings were available through various brands such as Fossil, Citizen, Skagen, Diesel, Michael Kors, Kate Spade, and others.
For owners of existing Fossil smartwatches, Best Buy is offering surprisingly high trade-in values for certain models.
