French luxury fashion group LVMH is planning to sell its own smartwatch brand and go head-to-head against Apple.
A report in the German newspaper Hendelsblatt quoting Jean-Claude Biver, president of the LVMH Watch Division, said LVMH expects to build a new client base with its smartwatch line.
The LVMH smartwatch is expected to be sold for 1,400 euros or about $1,500, a report in the Business of Fashion said.
LVMH already owns several brands such as Zenith, Hublot, and TAG Heuer. Biver said the LVMH watch division is focused on winning market share and will seek to "massively" build up its Tag Heuer and Hublot brands in China. LVMH Watches only makes about 5 percent of its revenue in China, Biver told Hendelsblatt.
He said each of the three brands should outperform the Swiss export market in its segment by at least 1 percent this year, and he hopes Hublot will see an 8 percent outperformance on this basis, Biver added.
An Apple executive had denied they plan to compete with luxury brands like LVMH.
John Ive, chief of design of the technology giant, said only select boutiques were initially allowed to sell Apple Watches as other customers had to wait for their orders to be delivered to them.
The reported foray of LVMH into the smartwatch segment came amid rumors of sluggish sales of the Apple Watch due to supply shortage. The Business of Fashion report also said that majority of its buyers also go for the low-priced Apple Watch Sport which go for 400 to 450 euros. The mid-range variant goes for 700 to 1,250 euros while the Apple Watch luxury edition retails for 11,000 to 18,000 euros according to its online store in Germany.
Slice Intelligence in a July report said Apple was selling fewer than 20,000 watches per day in the US, down from 200,000 watches a day when the product was launched in April. Apple has not yet released its sales data.
