Better Decisions Through Data.
This article was originally published by Acculation on another site.
The coming smartwatch revolution
They say that, thanks to smartphones, no one under age thirty still wears a watch. Who needs a heavy weight on your wrist when your smartphone can give you time?
Watches are about to come back in a major way, however. Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Google have all announced smartwatches. (And there’s plenty of existing entrants that are either smart watches or can be worn like one, like the Pebble and FitBit One, which are flying off the shelves at big box stores even if the salespeople haven’t figured quite figured out the difference between a smartwatch and a sportswatch.)
Computers are getting smaller as a consequence of Moore’s Law, and new form factors are needed. Your smartwatch will be more powerful than today’s desktops. And corporate giants are about to spend millions to capture what they believe is a $300 billion space.
Religious reasons for a Rolex?
It’s a natural evolution. Watches currently aren’t very techy. Ostensibly, timepieces became the predominant form of men’s jewelry after Protestant Swiss Cantons followed the lead of John Calvin of Geneva in 1541 and banned people from wearing jewelry. Timepieces, of course, were seen at the time as practical instruments rather than blingy jewelry, so escaped the ban. Swiss jewelers were forced to learn a new craft and soon turned their attention to adorning clocks.
$10,000 for an antiquated paperweight?
That mindset continues until today. According to a history put out by the Swatch group, the Swiss watching making industry regarded the introduction of digital watches in 1970s and 1980s as a fad that would soon pass, and had a similar distain for newer, inexpensive (and more accurate and practical) quartz analogue time pieces. One of us recalls a high-powered executive friend who claimed peer pressure forced him to purchase a $10,000 mechanical movement chronometer only to discover that it was less accurate than his previous $50 cheap quartz movement. Moreover, its automatic winding mechanism required it to be either be always worn, or be keep in an automatic winding tray to prevent the expensive timepiece from losing time.
One of us had a similar experience in our own purchase recently of a less expensive $600 designer watch (suggested retail price $1500). After purchasing the watch, he discovered counterfeits were being sold on the Internet. He decided to phone the manufacturer’s representative to see if the watches authenticity could be established. Although our team member purchase the watch from reputable retailer and had a certificate of authenticity and a serial number, he was told by the manufacturer that even these could be faked, and then only way for them to know for sure whether the watch was genuine or not was to open the watch and inspect the mechanism. The imitations were almost perfect in every way, and cost a fraction of the price.
Technology is the new haute couture? Apple is the new Rolex?
After hearing this story, we are coming to the view that a fine watch should be sufficiently technological advanced that the technology itself will be a barrier to counterfeit. (If you are paying $10,000 for a watch, shouldn’t it be technology advanced, and not use antiquated timekeeping technology from 100 years ago out of tradition or nostalgia?)
There are some Japanese watch mechanism that meet this threshold. (One manufacturer has solar-powered watches that maintain perfectly accurate atomic from broadcast sources or Bluetooth connections, can use watch hands to signal the arrival of email on a connected smartphone, and can run for half a year in a dark box. Amongst other features, any would-be counterfeiter would have difficult copying the solar cell technology subtly integrated into the watch face, and the owner would soon recognize something was amiss when the fake watch ran out of battery.)
Smartwatches will change all this. The technologically sophisticated will merge with fashion. (Apple has already figured this out, which is why they’ve reportedly hired a former CEO of Yves St. Laurent, known for his watch designs, to work on the iWatch.) Why would someone spend $10,000 for antiquated technology when they can something so much more practical on their wrist?
Smartwatch is the new desktop?
Smartwatches will do something of things we normally use smartphones and desktop computers for. (If the form factor still seems to small make some of these applications practical, don’t worry, engineers will figure out a way to get your favorite productivity apps ported. The interface has yet to be fully engineered.)
And we’ll be using them for new applications that weren’t possible with the old form factors. (Ultimately, wearables are about software, as this GigaOm article makes clear. One of our staffers wears his FitBit on his wrist at night (“hideous wriststrap” and all) to track his sleeping patterns. It’s pretty amazing at how different “normal” sleeping patters are from a sleeping pattern you might have while heavily fatigued or when you’re under the weather. And you can see the sleep pattern change even before you know you’re sick sometimes. In the future, we’ll probably wear smartwatches in our sleep, and they’ll be able to detect when we’re ill or stressed even before we do, and alert us in the morning to take appropriate steps (like see a doctor or take a yoga class).
Eliminating that dead weight on your wrist
And that’s partially what the wearables and smartwatch revolution are about. Replace the dead weight on your arm taken by that technologically antiquated wristband or watchband and replace it with something cool, stylish, and much more functional. Something that carries a little or a lot of information. Something that might even save your life someday.
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