fossil - a watch for every wrist

The development of the Fossil Wrist PDA began in 1999 when engineer Donald Brewer licensed a read-only version of the Palm OS from Palm Source and tried to make it work in a watch.[1] For the first year of development, Brewer struggled to make the watch small enough to be wearable. The initial designs looked like "a cell phone glued on one's wrist" and in board meetings the term "boat anchor" was used.[1] He began to talk with Microsoft engineers, who were looking for a wrist-top platform as well and were busy developing Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT watches). Once the size was decreased, the next major hurdle was making the screen. The smallest screens available at the time were cell phone screens that had 90 by 126 pixels. Palm OS, however, was written for a touch-sensitive 160- by 160-pixel screen. Re-working the code would be a massive undertaking, so engineers began to look for suppliers that could deliver the new technology. An engineering firm in Arizona called Three-Five Systems was able to deliver the display in July 2002. The resulting device was rushed to the COMDEX convention where it won the "best of COMDEX" award for "best mobile device".[2] The original prototype had 2MB of memory, which was expanded to 8MB for the commercial release.[2] The price at debut was $250US.[3]
Fossil created a series of wrist PDAs which all had the same internal hardware, but differences in cosmetic design. The first series was the AU5005, AU5006, and AU5008 models which debuted in 2002 but due to various delays took several years to reach stores. In 2003, Fossil removed it from the company's web site, sparking a wave of rumors saying that the WristPDA was doomed.[4] Sales were initially low, so in 2005 Fossil created two new models with slightly slimmer cases called the Fossil Abacus FX2008 and FX2009 (Abacus is a subsidiary of Fossil), with a price tag of $200.[3] Because of lack of sales, prices dropped rapidly, and in late 2005 it was retailing for as low as