The watch market, in recent years, has seen the emergence of a new product, the so-called Smartwatches. They are wearable devices, connected to your mobile phone, which increase their functionality. Their success is remarkable: at the beginning of 2020, the only one Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),, with his Apple Watch, Has exceeded in sales the entire Swiss watch industry.
Smartwatches are therefore the future of watchmaking? Just a passing fad? Do fans of traditional watches have to worry? Let's find out together in this article.
What is a smartwatch?
The so-called SmartWatch, in English "smart watch", is a wearable electronic device. It is a tool that, through the use of a rechargeable battery, a processor, a touch screen and a wireless connection to a smartphone, allows the user to interact with his mobile phone without having to pick it up. The smartwatch can then integrate other functions on its own, even if currently those able to work autonomously from the smartphone are few: to date, the smartwatch does not seem able to replace the smartphone.
Because the smartwatch is not a watch
Is the smartwatch a watch? Although the name contains the word "watch", "watch", the answer is decidedly negative. The smartwatch is a wearable electronic device. It is not conceptually dissimilar to a tablet or smartphone that was tied to the wrist with a special support: it has only more compact dimensions, for obvious reasons of ergonomics. The fact that it indicates the time is not in itself just enough to qualify it as a watch: even an iPad or one meridiana solar do, but we do not qualify them as watches.
Un clock is an instrument designed to measure the passage of time, which is worn on the wrist, or in your pocket. It may have additional features, such as the chronograph or the tourbillon, but it remains conceived as a timepiece.
Uno smartwatch is a wearable electronic device, which has more in common with a mobile phone than with a watch.
Because the smartwatch is not the new quartz crisis
The quartz crisis in the XNUMXs endangers the survival of the Swiss watch industry. The availability of robust, accurate, reliable watches at a fraction of the price of a traditional mechanical watch, implies the need for maison Swiss companies to reinvent themselves. many disappear, others choose to follow the quartz path, as Swatch does. In the Eighties, the return of the passion for fine watchmaking allows the surviving companies to recover: today a mechanical watch is bought because its complexity and refinement are appreciated, because you choose a potentially unlimited object in its duration, to be handed down to future generations, not simply to look at the time, a purpose which quartz watches also perform well.
A Swatch poster from a few decades ago
The quartz crisis has impacted the traditional watch industry because it has offered higher performance watches at a lower cost. Mechanical watchmaking responded with quality, innovation, passion. But we have always moved in the field of watches: instruments for measuring the passage of time.
The smartwatch doesn't have much to do with watches, if not the physical location: the wrist. But this is not a watch, as it was not created with the primary purpose of measuring time, but rather with a smartphone extension worn on the wrist instead of in a pocket.
Those who wear a smartwatch generally used the phone to check the time even before the advent of smartwatches. Watchmaking enthusiasts who choose to wear a smartwatch are not very many, and in any case they continue to wear the traditional watch on occasions when the smartwatch is not appreciated, such as when you dress elegantly to attend an important event. Moreover, those who own both smartwatches and traditional watches tend to use the smartwatch on occasions, such as sports, in which previously they wore nothing on their wrist, or wore a battery-powered watch.
What future for the traditional watch?
The traditional watch, in our opinion, faces a bright future. There is no reason to think that the emergence of smartwatches is to the detriment of traditional watches, for two reasons:
- Those who buy a smartwatch usually didn't wear a watch before
- The smartwatch is not a watch, it is a wearable electronic device
The traditional watch represents an object that has very little to do with wearable devices, except for the part of the body where it is worn, namely the wrist. The reasons for wearing it are certainly not the same as for wearing a smartwatch. For this, they are two fields that do not interfere with each other.
One last note: the smartwatch is a fashion. The wearable bought today is obsolete and replaced in a year. The mechanical watch instead ...
