MyKronoz: make smartwatches for everyone to wear

IT168 Interview During MWC2017, Swiss smart wearables brand MyKronoz officially launched ZeTime, the world's first hybrid smartwatch. unlike most smartwatches on the market, it perfectly integrates traditional mechanical hands into a round, full-color touchscreen. the ZeTime pioneered the opening of a hole in the center of a round TFT color display, with a traditional watch hands, perfectly combining the classic design with the functions of a smartwatch. During the exhibition, we also had the honor to contact MyKronoz CEO: Boris Brault and talk about this ZeTime product.

When he first started out, everyone thought Boris Brault was crazy, and didn't understand why he was starting a smartwatch company in Switzerland. Because there were so many challenges to getting into this field. But Boris Brault says, "In hindsight, the vision and passion have paid off. We've sold nearly 2 million smartwatches since our founding, and MyKronoz's commitment to providing smartwatches for everyone and being an industry leader in pricing, diversity, and historic design has led the company forward."

▲Official ZeTime image

Looking at the products that have been released so far, MyKronoz is a classic design-driven company. Its inspiration is to combine the essence of traditional Swiss watchmaking with the functionality of a smartwatch to create smart wearables that are accessible to the majority of consumers, and ZeTime, a hybrid smartwatch, illustrates this inspiration perfectly. The ZeTime is a hybrid smartwatch that perfectly illustrates this inspiration, combining classic, traditional hands with an information-rich, full-color touchscreen.

▲ZeTime in action

In the interview, Boris Brault emphasized the keyword "stylish product design" several times. He said, "The design of a smartwatch should not deviate from the sophisticated and stylish design of a traditional watch. The first time a user sees MyKronoz's smartwatch device, he or she should be attracted to its appearance in the same way that he or she is attracted to a high-end wristwatch, so that he or she will wear it every day. Otherwise, it will only be a mere liability for measuring and detecting exercise or other data."

So far, MyKronoz has released a number of smart bracelets and watches, and in terms of the proportion of sales, Boris Brault said, "Right now, the bracelet category is a bigger part of the overall sales, and the proportion of bracelets and watches is roughly 80 percent and 20 percent. But in the future, MyKronoz will gradually increase the proportion of smartwatch products, and it is expected that the proportion of the two product categories may be split in half in 2017."

About the bracelet products, recording sports and sleep data has always been my most concerned about the two major parts, but for most of the products on the market for sleep recording I think not enough to do. In this regard, Boris Brault said: At present, in the field of sports and sleep data monitoring, there are more and more mature solutions. The more dimensional the data, the more accurate and instructive guidance can be provided to the user. In this regard, MyKronoz has been able to integrate sleep, heart rate, and blood pressure data, and MyKronoz has opened up many APIs to third parties to make the data analysis more multidimensional and strive to provide users with more accurate and reliable exercise and sleep guidance programs.

In addition, how to motivate users to use the bracelet for a long time is also a very important aspect, said Boris Brault: First of all, whether it's a bracelet or a smartwatch, it should have a high value attribute, which is the basic premise of making users have the desire to use it. Secondly, take sports as an example, in order to make users completely fall in love with sports, sports circle type of social application is indispensable, MyKronoz will not go to build a new social platform, but will consider choosing to cooperate with well-known platforms similar to facebook, to expand the influence of MyKronoz in the social platform.

▲MyKronoz launched ZeRound products

In terms of product promotion, MyKronoz emphasizes the "combination of fashion and technology". I believe that when the wearable industry develops and the technology becomes more mature in the future, the wearable smartwatches will return to the tradition more and more. myKronoz's DNA originates from Switzerland, and the way they design their products is different from that of other brands. First of all, they should consider what kind of product users want to buy from the perspective of fashion. Most of the wearable smart products on the market are engineer-oriented and function-driven, and engineers don't have the concept of fashion. MyKronoz, being in Switzerland and Europe, has a deeper understanding of fashion. Based on this, MyKronoz's market competitiveness should not be underestimated.

On the current smart wearable market, Boris Brault has his own understanding, "If you pay close attention, you will find that the user feedback of many smart wearable products is not up to expectations, there are a lot of compromises, and waterproofing and endurance are the two most criticized aspects. And MyKronoz's new ZeTime uses traditional physical hands to achieve a range performance comparable to that of a traditional watch, and achieves ATM3 water resistance.

Specifically, the ZeTime is inspired by classic Swiss watches and comes in a sleek stainless steel case that blends wearable technology with traditional watch design. It also comes with a variety of interchangeable digital dials and straps to perfectly match any style. In terms of performance, ZeTime uses a 3-axis acceleration sensor and an optical heart rate sensor to track movement and sleep. With water resistance up to ATM3, the ZeTime offers the quality and versatility of a traditional high-end watch, but at a much lower price.

The watch will go on sale in early September 2017 for CNY 1,499, an outstanding price/performance ratio. And now China's smart wearable market is also in its infancy, the market demand for the next period of time is huge, and we expect MyKronoz to become a favorite smart wearable brand for Chinese users.