HP partners with Movado on $695 Bold Motion, analog smartwatch that uses LEDs and haptic feedback for alerts, a second wearable in “Engineered by HP” program
Sean O'Kane / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
In 2015, legacy watchmakers are choosing between building smartwatches themselves or renting tech credibility from Silicon Valley. Movado's answer follows the template of Google, Intel and TAG Heuer's luxury smartwatch partnership, announced earlier that year and materialized in Tag Heuer's Intel-powered Android Wear launch — a heritage brand supplying design while a tech firm supplies the electronics.
HP's $695 Bold Motion takes a different branch of that fork: rather than a full touchscreen running Android Wear, it stays an analog watch that signals notifications through LEDs and haptic feedback, and it is only the second product under HP's "Engineered by HP" licensing program.
First-order effects
- Movado gets a connected product without building a software stack, while HP adds a luxury-fashion distribution channel to an Engineered by HP lineup that now has two wearables.
- Buyers at the $695 price point get a hybrid that hides the technology inside a conventional analog watch — positioned directly against TAG Heuer's screen-first Android Wear alternative in the same luxury bracket.
Second-order effects
- Other fashion houses watching both deals must pick a lane: license a platform like Movado did, co-develop a full smartwatch like TAG Heuer, or sit out and risk losing the connected-wrist category entirely.
- The Bold Motion's subtle-alerts design pressures full-screen rivals on battery life and discretion, but later entrants show where volume went — Misfit's $199 Vapor touchscreen smartwatch undercut the price point dramatically once AMOLED hardware commoditized.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the watch industry splits structurally into licensed-hybrid houses and full-smartwatch platforms, with tech firms becoming contract manufacturers of credibility for brands whose value lies in design and nameplate.
- The long arc runs toward screens and sensors winning: by the time of Garmin's $799 Venu X1 with AMOLED display and health monitoring, the premium market had consolidated around full-screen devices, leaving minimal-alert hybrids like the Bold Motion as a niche experiment.
The trend: Luxury watchmakers are partnering with tech firms to enter wearables, but the market's pull toward full-screen, sensor-rich devices keeps squeezing out analog-hybrid designs like HP and Movado's Bold Motion.