It was bound to happen sooner or later, with Apple taking on the computer, the phone and the music industry, it is now set to change the watch industry forever and redefine what a watch actually is.
With the release of the Apple Watch came an innovative way of telling the time. No longer will we look down at our wrist to simply be told that it is 10 past 2, now we can also use it to communicate with others through a tap, a sketch or even our heartbeat. Not only this, but we can also be motivated by our watch through a snapshot of our daily activity, get directions and speak to our own personal assistant ‘Siri’.
But what does this mean for traditional brands, will there be a knock on effect of people choosing wearable technology over traditional watches? There just isn’t enough wrist space for everybody, and with our overwhelming desire for technology how will they adapt to keep up?
The digital watch, was once a huge advancement in the world of time keeping, but will the ticking hands of a typical mens watch or ladies jewellery-inspired timepiece disappear as advancements continue to progress? When digital watches first came on to the scene they were easy to copy, but the details in Apple’s design will be extremely difficult to replicate.
But that won’t stop them trying! The traditional watch has already dealt with a serious competitor back in the 1980’s, which experts refer to as the ‘quartz crisis’. This was when inexpensive quartz movement-based timepieces came in from Asia, to compete with the more expensive and less accurate mechanical watches. The response to this was Swatch; the colourful, trendy and cheap Swiss-made quartz watches.
Now, some traditional watch brands are already making steps towards competing with the Apple Watch. Swiss Luxury watch brand Tag Heuer is working on a new Smartwatch with help from Google and Intel. It will include Intel hardware, while running Google’s Android Wear wearable operating system software.
Traditional watches have been doing a perfectly good job of telling us the time for years and would have continued to. Perhaps the popularity and buzz that came with the launch of this futuristic watch will boost the traditional watch design, which had already fallen behind due to the fact that our phones can give us access to not only our own time zone, but time zones across the world as well at any time.
However, in a world now dominated by technology, plus the need to advance it (and the necessary measures we must take to keep up with it) Smartwatches are bound be in demand – with traditional watches having to become more technologically advanced to keep up. No longer will we brag of owning a branded watch such as Rolex, instead we will brag that our watch can tell us what is happening throughout our day, what the weather is going to be like and oh, tell the time of course.
With advancements taking us from traditional wristwatches to wearable technology already, who knows what we could be wearing on our wrists in years to come. Only time will tell!
Photograph by markusspiske / Pixabay