Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer S.A. will officially join the smartwatch market with an expected announcement Thursday that it will be launching a new luxury watch in a partnership with Intel Corp.

According to Reuters, the new watch will differentiate itself from the current crop of smartwatches and instead offer a digital replica of its Black Carrera watch (pictured), complete with sporty look and bulky aesthetics.

“People will have the impression that they are wearing a normal watch,” Tag Heuer Chief Executive Jean-Claude Biver added.

TAG Heuer first said it was interested in releasing a smartwatch in September 2014, although few expected it would be announcing a smartwatch as soon as March 2015.

At a press conference Tuesday, Biver was said to reply to who would be powering the new smartwatch by saying, “It’s not Apple,” hinting perhaps that it may be powered by Google’s Android Wear.

Swiss made?

One problem facing TAG Heuer is that for a watch to be Swiss made, it needs to be at least 50 percent made in Switzerland.

“We can’t produce the engine, the chips, the applications, the hardware — nobody can produce it in Switzerland,” Biver told Bloomberg in a separate interview. “The hardware and the software will come from Silicon Valley. But the watch case, the dial, the design, the idea, the crown, that part of the watch will, of course, be Swiss.”

Although the title of “made in Switzerland” in 2015 still carries a lot of weight among watch aficionados, the brand of TAG Heuer is a mark of quality itself, at least among those who are happy to pay in excess of $2,000 for a quality timepiece.

The move into smartwatches by the company is a wise one; while the jury is still out on how well the Apple Watch will be received by the market, there’s no question that smart watches is both the direction the market is moving, and the section of the market offering the greatest growth opportunities.

Image credit: TAG Heuer.