Stuff meets: Felix Obschonka from Montblanc

Our first smartwatch, the Summit, launched in 2017, was the first classic luxury smartwatch. 

In 2014 and 2015 the first smartwatches were coming to the market with the aim to redefine what consumers should wear on their wrist. Back then, we could have chosen to either stay out of that market and have no say as a watchmaker in the smartwatch segment. Or we could share our passion for fine watch making and define how a watchmaker would build a smartwatch. As Montblanc is known as a brand that sets out for new horizons, we have decided for the second route. We leveraged the expertise that we have in watch making and partnered up with technology companies in order to combine Swiss watch making design codes with the latest in technology.

We view the smartwatch category through the eyes of a watch maker.

We start from the outside by defining a beautiful yet functional watch, with handmade finishings like brushing and polishing, fine materials and the craftsmanship required to bring everything together. So basically, we build first a watch that you love to wear because it just looks like a fine timepiece. So, the watch case serves as a talking point and not only as a vessel for electronic components.

Using titanium gives us an advantage

First and foremost it is very light, so you can wear it at all times and you do not feel a hefty weight on your wrist. In particular, when you track your sleep, and therefore wear the watch throughout the night, the light weight makes a difference. 

The most important thing for us is that we leverage what we can do best – building fine timepieces.

We trust our watch designers to make something outstanding before we even start thinking around the technology. It is this friction between traditional watch makers and new technology that creates something unique. With our heritage in watch making, we can rely on rich design elements which may not be accessible to consumer electronic brands. As an example, our watch faces are inspired by dials that have been refined over a century. So, by getting inspired from our tradition we are able to create something that combines the future and our heritage seamlessly.

While there’s no mechanical movement, there are new challenges arising from the electronics.

In particular, the trade-off between battery and display size, and the height and diameter of the watch, is influencing our design direction. But aside from the design of the watch, I believe that not having a mechanical movement allows to tell time and give information to the user in novel ways. You have a lot of freedom to play with animations and other digital features.

Montblanc’s approach to watch faces makes us unique

While we track your workouts, sleep, fitness level and so on, what makes this watch unique is the approach we take to the watch faces. Most of the time throughout the day watch faces will be visible to you and others, and therefore having something that not only tells information but also resembles a traditional dial and keeps the beauty of time keeping is important to us.

We are agnostic to different companion operating systems.

We are partnering with Google, so our watch is optimized to run on Wears OS by Google. With the Summit 3 we also made a step from Wear OS 2 to Wear OS 3. The most difficult is the balance between a rich user experience and efficient battery life, so this is where we spent a lot of time. When we updated from Wear OS 2 to Wear OS 3 it was important for us that we still support iOS. Our clients use a lot of iOS devices so we want to give them the opportunity to enjoy the watch. It is indeed a unique approach, being agnostic to different companion operating systems.

Longevity is of course a difference between analogue watches and smartwatches

I believe that a smartwatch will not last for generations and I think also that our clients do not expect that they will leave their smartwatch for their kids to inherit. But at the same time we want to give our clients the best options to wear the watch for as long as possible. Here we offer continuous software updates, repair service and battery exchange programs so that your watch can last for years. We still have a lot of users that are very happy with our first generation watch. Additionally, if owners decide to upgrade to a new generation, we offer a trade in program for existing watches.

Interview: Rachael Sharpe