Titan dials down on thinness to take aim at precision in watches
The Edge has long been one of Titan’s most well-known sub-brands. The next section may offer a glimpse into the company’s broader watchmaking ambitions.
Titan recently released a new version of its luxury Stellar series. Stellar 3.0 has some impressive under-the-hood work in its limited edition models. These include the in-house navigational watch complication, where traditional hands are replaced by a rotating satellite mechanism, grade 5 titanium cases, another first for the brand, and some striking dials. Prices reflecting Titan’s premium move, ₹96,000 and ₹1.8 lakhs. “Sales of our automatic machines are doubling every year,” said Kuruvilla Markose, the newly appointed CEO of Titan’s watch division.
The Stellar series is only two years old, but towards the end of September the company introduced the latest version of the Edge, which is among the best-known of the 19 million watches it sells every year, including smartwatches. (For the record, that’s more than the entire Swiss watch industry combined.)
New Ultra Thin ( ₹75,000) uses one of the world’s thinnest quartz movements and features a floating disc hand just 160 microns thick (thinner than two human hairs) that displays the time in ten-minute intervals. “It took us about three years to shave off half a millimeter,” Markose said. At 3.3mm, the Ultra Slim is the thinnest Edge yet, 0.2mm thinner than the original released in 2002. But Titan is not the only watchmaker living in and investing in this particular region. Over the years, especially in the last decade, many watchmakers have regularly toppled each other at the top of Slimmest Mountain.
War of subtlety
Thin watches are not new. Brands such as Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Piaget and Bulgari have been losing weight and miniaturizing their components for decades. But the competition actually reignited in the 2010s. Piaget’s 3.65mm Altiplano 900P was once the world’s thinnest mechanical watch and set the initial benchmark, but Bulgari surpassed it, turning the Octo Finissimo into a repeating engineering marvel; Each successive model shaved microns off the previous one. Titan joined this league in 2021 with the 5.85 mm thin Edge Mechanical. Price of the limited edition watch ₹1.95 lakh, powered by 2.2mm Edge Caliber 903 with 42 hours power reserve.
Three years ago, Swiss luxury watchmaker Richard Mille, loved by Indian cricketers and movie stars, launched the RM UP-01. The 1.75 mm thick, 30 gram watch had a case thinner than its own strap. The thinnest mechanical watch in the world today is Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC, which is only 1.70 mm thick and is achieved thanks to the monoblock case-back mechanism that almost erases the line between the movement and the case.
breaking point
A similar war took place in the 1970s and 80s, when quartz technology was both developing and booming. Japanese brands such as Seiko and Citizen, and in turn Longines and Concord (now owned by Movado), have produced ultrathin cases to showcase their micro-engineering mastery. Concord’s Delirium series featured watches that were almost a millimeter thick, and this period gave birth to companies specializing in ultra-thin movements, such as Jean Lassale, which was later acquired by Seiko. When Titan introduced the Edge in 2002, it was a continuation of the same lineage.
Of course, there were times when all this extreme pursuit of sophistication seemed comical and self-indulgent. At 0.98 mm thin, the Concord Delirium IV was not very wearable when worn on the wrist for fear of the case bending. ₹4.5 crore Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC is supposed to be wearable but there are some caveats. This is exactly the kind of territory Titan wants to avoid. “Edge Mechanical was a demonstration of what we could do,” Markose says, “but our goal is to make watches that are both practical and wearable.”
Future of Edge
While some enthusiasts would like to see the Edge evolve in a more mechanical direction, Titan’s roadmap points elsewhere: towards accuracy and efficiency. Markose says the company plans to continue pushing the boundaries of precision and fineness through quartz innovation, which it believes still has untapped potential.
In the wider watch world, this pursuit of ultra-precision quartz, often referred to as high-precision quartz or super quartz, has its place but a devoted following. The majority of quartz watches oscillate at 32,768 Hz, which is the standard frequency for quartz timekeeping, but HAQ movements achieve extraordinary precision thanks to thermal compensation and meticulous regulation. By adjusting for temperature changes and crystal aging, they can maintain stability within a few seconds per year, far beyond what even the most advanced mechanical calibers can achieve.
Over the years, Grand Seiko’s 9F (±10 seconds per year) and Breitling’s SuperQuartz (almost identical) have defined the top end of this segment. The current accuracy champion is Citizen’s Caliber 0100, the most commercially accurate watch ever made and rated at ±1 second per year. The watch’s super high-frequency oscillator operates at a mind-blowing frequency of 8,388,608 Hz.
Now closer to home, Titan is exploring its own path to greater efficiency and precision. Markose explains that most current R&D efforts are focused on micromotors, individual motors that power separate modules rather than relying on a single common driver. “We are working on something we call synchronized analog micromotors internally,” he says, likening the system to an orchestra in which each section performs independently but in harmony. This is not a traditional heat-compensated HAQ movement, but Titan’s own engineering route to the same goal of greater stability, accuracy, and design flexibility.
For the Edge, this could mark a quiet evolution: from the thinnest watch Titan can make to the most precise watch it can make. “The goal,” Markose says, “is to continue to push the boundaries with new materials, micromotors and precision engineering, without losing sight of the user. We are in a very difficult position in fire.”
