TomTom’s new Spark watches to playback music, have GPS and HR monitor

TomTom launched its GPS fitness watches with heart-rate monitors on January 21 last year at a starting price of ₹ 12,999. The company had justified its launches stating that the wearables category was growing in India with people becoming more concerned about their health. The company didn’t break out any specific sales figure of its previously launched devices in India.

The watches are sold in exclusive partnership with e-tailer Flipkart.

TomTom, the Amesterdam-based technology company, is all set to return to India with another set of its smartwatches after exactly a year.

The company had launched its GPS fitness watches with heart-rate monitors on January 21 last year at a starting price of ₹ 12,999. The company had justified its launches stating that the wearables category was growing in India with people becoming more concerned about their health. The company didn't break out any specific sales figure of its previously launched devices in India.

The watches were sold in exclusive partnership with e-tailer Flipkart.

The new series showcased in IFA Berlin last year, called Spark and also to be sold at Flipkart, will be priced between ₹13,999 and ₹25,999. The Spark watches will come with music playback ability, GPS and heart rate monitors.

The first of the three variants to be launched on Thursday will not come with the music playback option while the other variants will house all the three with the top end coming with a HP smartwatch bundle.

The Spark will be the first of its kind smartwatch to have independent music playback letting users forget the smartphone at home. Although it cannot stream music, users can feed songs to the memory of the watch via a software bundle available separately for iOS and Windows.

It will also be interesting to see how the company copes up with the rapidly changing market in India. While wearables like that of TomTom (which helps excercise, track activity and lets you read notifications) are getting cheaper and smaller, TomTom's last launches were a little heavy and were impossible to be worn throughout the day without getting a numb wrist.

Recently, foreign top players like Fitbit and Jawbone have entered India inspite of the world market making a shift towards smartwatches rather than simple activity trackers. Gartner's research director Vishal Tripathi also had an interesting take about the wearables market.

"Although the market is growing, it is still at a nascent stage. TomTom has lesser brand value than Apple or a Fitbit and hence will be tough for them to capture the market here. The high price of the product and the music playback feature can be the best differentiator," he said adding that a lot of people are still depending on apps to measure their runs and fitness activities.