Fossil CEO: Wearables Smothering Swiss Watch Business 202
itwbennett writes: I think technology and the whole idea of wearables ... has taken some of the oxygen out of the Swiss business,' Fossil CEO Kosta Kartsotis told analysts on a call to discuss the watch maker's second quarter results. These new competitors, along with other factors like a strong U.S. dollar, contributed to Fossil's quarterly revenue decline, Kartsotis said. Last week, a report from market research firm NPD Group claimed the Apple Watch was partially behind the largest slump in U.S. watch sales since 2008.
Slump? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Last week, a report from market research firm NPD Group claimed the Apple Watch was partially behind the largest slump in U.S. watch sales since 2008." And according to the article, "Retailers sold $375 million of watches during the month, 11 percent less than in June 2014 ... a 14% decline in unit sales."
Put another way, the Apple Watch led the US in the largest sales boost in watch history, with an estimated $4 billion in sales so far.
It's almost impossible to feel bad for someone who produces such a cl
Re:Slump? (Score:4, Insightful)
A "clearly inferior product"?
Any day of the week i will take a finally produced piece of jewlery (what a watch basically is in the 21st century) over a lame fad that at first glance looks like a cheap piece of garbage on my wrist and does nothing usefull that my cell doesnt do better.
The first time i saw an Apple watch on someone's wrist i honestly thought they were wearing an ironic throwback time piece. Then i realized they were wearing an expensive, highly redundant, cheap looking piece of trash.
It really does look like a calculator watch (Score:3)
I'm not sure what aesthetic they were going for, but they missed the mark. You can argue about features and such, but it is ugly.
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I never even considered an Apple watch but if it looks like a calculator watch, I might go buy one. Maybe I could run a calculator app full screen!
I think pretty much everything runs full screen on the Apple Watch.
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I'm not sure what aesthetic they were going for, but they missed the mark. You can argue about features and such, but it is ugly.
+1
If you want a decent-looking smart watch, Android has much better offerings than iOS.
Re:It really does look like a calculator watch (Score:4, Funny)
What's wrong with the calculator watch? You're on slashdot, most folks here wore one for years... or at least I hope they're still around here somewhere.
The last time I thought calculator watches were cool, I was a tween getting beat up for being the kind of person who thought calculator watches were cool.
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"The first time i saw an Apple watch on someone's wrist i honestly thought they were wearing an ironic throwback time piece. Then i realized they were wearing an expensive, highly redundant, cheap looking piece of trash."
Yeah, but at least it was still ironic...
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The last time I saw an old-fashioned gear and spring driven watch on someone's wrist, I honestly thought they were wearing an ironic throwback time piece. Then I realized they were wearing an expensive, highly redundant, gaudy looking piece of trash that they actually thought would impress other people.
Way to sensationalize! (Score:3, Interesting)
So now "taken some oxygen out" is the same as "smothering"? LOL! Smart watches are a fad, like tablets. People with money to burn want authentic watches, not expensive toys that need to be charged every other day and get fucked by software updates.
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Smart watches are a fad, like tablets...
Wrong on both counts. Tablets first. Very solid market segment, lots of good solid reasons to own a tablet, actually, multiple tablets per household. Ask around your neighbors, you know I'm right. My kid keeps swiping my tablets (both...) and I know its just a matter of time before I must part with one permanently (and bring in a newer more powerful one of course). I don't take a laptop on most road trips any more, just the tablet and phone. That's good for doing presentations, working on documents, adminis
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Did you swipe that whole speech on a tablet?
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Life's too short for that. I did not enter that on a tablet, but I certainly have entered that much and more frequently enough in the past. I always use a bluetooth keyboard for that. My HTC Vision, unfortunately not made any more, has been good for a large amount of IRC chat, which works well on its flip out keyboard, the best that was ever made for a phone IMHO. But posting to slashdot is still a bit much, and even on IRC I tend to abbreviate more.
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That's kinda the point about tablets. To actually use them, you need more hardware. The laptop already has that hardware. So you are effectively needing a laptop that can be minimized at times.
Eventually all computers for consumers and common business workers are going to be downsized to tablets or smaller, with accessory hardware available as needed. They'll still be 10 times more powerful than the newest Intel i7's are today, just as the current tablets are much more powerful than the first Pentium PCs. B
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That's kinda the point about tablets. To actually use them, you need more hardware. The laptop already has that hardware. So you are effectively needing a laptop that can be minimized at times.
That's why the Asus Transformer devices are conceptually the coolest things around. In practice they haven't got all the love they needed to get to be taken all that seriously; you have to go to the aftermarket to get software updates. Though amusingly, the 5.1 rom I just installed on my TF201 is supposed to have a stagefright fix, I'll run the checker as soon as my apps finish restoring from their Titanium backups.
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Devs are a tiny sliver of the computer market. That said, I am one, but I have a range of interests besides development, a number of which map nicely to the tablet. I have from time to time done miscellaneous development using the tablet for ssh (Connectbot, quite nice) but obviously it is not ideal for that. If you had to, you could make it work, and in truth, its vastly more capable than the early PCs I did develop on, but life is too short for that and everything is bloaty and complex now.
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it's an entirely different market yeah.
apple watch loses value in 5 years to zero.
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Unopened Apple watches will probably go back up above sale price in a few decades. Especially if they stop making them. :)
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To be fair, Fossil watches are a fad too.
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I don't think they've even taken any of the air out of swiss watches, since the markets don't overlap, and people who can afford Swiss watches aren't exhausting their fashion budget with the 3 digit price tags of most wearables. Likely sales are simply down for whatever reason (poor marketing or design), and the CEO is just blaming someone other than themselves.
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People who want authentic watches also don't buy rip off Fossil watches either, being thy they are crap.
Fossil is fucked because of everyone carrying a phone and not needing to buy some shitty over priced POS.
Wearables have nothing to do with Fossils problem, they are just another shitty buggy whip manufacturer who is going down kicking and screaming that it's someone else's fault instead of adapting.
Evolution- you adapt or you go extinct. Fossil chooses extinction
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So now "taken some oxygen out" is the same as "smothering"? LOL! Smart watches are a fad, like tablets.
Tablets are a fad how? Because people use them far longer than their phones before replacing them? Well apart from the NVIDIA Shield's of course.
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LOL! Smart watches are a fad, like tablets.
I think that the notion that smart watches are a fad is why the Fossil CEO is mentioning them; it sounds more hopeful than "most people under 35 use their phone to tell time rather than a watch."
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People with money to burn want authentic watches
Just not fossils. It would be interesting to hear what the CEOs of traditional (actually Swiss) brands have to say.
Re: Way to sensationalize! (Score:4, Interesting)
Rubbish. Complete fucking rubbish.
Despite the breathless anticipation of marketing wankers, futurists, and prognosticators ... remarkably little will change in the long run, in the short run there will be change.
There will continue to be desktops. Tablets are here to stay. The Apple watch isn't competing with the traditional watch, no matter what anybody tells you, it's a short term blip as a certain kind of consumer buys different things. Not everybody wants a smart watch, and buying a tablet doesn't mean you don't need a PC.
And then things will settle out, people will still buy traditional watches, the niche market for smart watches will continue to be a niche, and the world will have ultimately changed not as much as you think, nobody will have been pushed away, and you'll still be an idiot who thinks the world actually changes with every new piece of technology.
Trends and fads are, in the end, are just that. In the long run, actual watches will still exist ... and the clueless idiots who either haven't been around long enough, or are paid to tell us what they think the future will be, will discover that just because some fool says we'll all be doing something in a few years doesn't bloody well make it true. Because it never has.
So you'll excuse me if I think your breathless belief that the world has fundamentally changed due to the existence of an Apple watch is the breathless gibberish of someone who hasn't been around technology long enough to know the difference between long term and shot term trends.
Talk to us in 2, 5, 10, or 25 years, and we might take any of this seriously. Until then, this is pink sweat-pants which say "Baby Phat" on the ass -- a mere fucking blip. A trend in style, not a fundamental shift in society.
The Apple watch, or any smart watch, has yet to prove anything other than, for the time being, hipsters are interested in it. Thankfully, long term trends are seldom defined by hipsters, as much as they like to think otherwise.
And then the rest of the world will carry on with normal life.
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Why would people need traditional watches, again?
Same reason you need a silk pocket puff and cuff links, once every five years.
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When you wear a Tux you need cufflinks and studs, otherwise you look like a dork :)
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When you wear a tux, you look like a dork. Cufflinks or no.
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When you wear a tux, you look like a dork. Cufflinks or no.
I always look like a dork, but I look better in a tux. Better to be a well-dressed dork.
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If you think you can wear a suite you probably don't pay much attention to anything.
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They're common on the east coast where everyone still dresses in 1960's business attire or gets shunned. Old money vs. new money.
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There is something to be said for a well tailored suit. I do not even mind a tie, I kind of like it. I am usually a cargo pants, moccasins, wool socks, t-shirt, and a long sleeve (unbuttoned) type of guy but I do love me a suit and tie occasion once in a while. What? Those guys have the best drugs. They won't share if you don't dress like them.
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You don't stay married long, do you?
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Because I can get a timepiece for $30 that runs over a year on one set of batteries, doing exactly what I want: telling time.
I know many people who don't even own a "smart" phone, and these watches all seem to require being tethered to such a device, and are kind of useless in and of themselves.
So while you're patting yourself on the back for spending $300-500 on a "smart" watch on top of $300-500 for a "smart" phone, I'll happily spend that $570-970 on a desktop upgrade and stick with my old fashioned
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30 bucks?
one for a fiver will run all year anyhow.
as for a smartphone.. why wouldn't you want a computer in your pocket? but if you have already that, wtf do you need the smart watch for.
and if apple has sold 11 million iWatches I sure aren't seeing any of them worn by anyone.
(smartphone pricing starts at about 70 bucks these days, no lock, no sub, 800x480px. 300-500 is pretty high end actually)
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as for a smartphone.. why wouldn't you want a computer in your pocket? but if you have already that, wtf do you need the smart watch for.
Yeah, this. Even if all you do is use it to look at porn and pictures of cats, and take the occasional mediocre picture, that's still awesome. It's the future11!!!!111.
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It's the *cellphone* I don't want. I *hated* carrying a cell phone for work, because the boss thought nothing of calling me at all hours of the night and day on it. The hassle soured me on the whole idea of "always on" phone access; I'd rather just stick with a landline and let people leave messages.
Hell, I heard someone answering their cell while taking a crap at one office. Seriously -- if you can't call taking a crap "me time" and leave the damned phone alone, your leash is too short and the collar
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The next generation of iWatch will have longer lasting batteries and more features. Why would people need traditional watches, again?
To demonstrate their wealth and refined sense of taste. The same reason they wear expensive, impractical shoes or suits. Let's not even pretend that anything Apple makes falls into that market segment.
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Lasting two days without charging (instead of one) versus pretty much running perpetually isn't the same thing.
And, as much as this might shock you ... not everybody gives a crap about a smart watch.
Who needs an Apple watch? I sure as hell don't. I don't want one, because it's a pointless gadget I have no need for.
It's a gadget for people who fetishize technology and their phones. For the rest of the world, traditional watches are all they'll ever need or want.
If you want one, buy one. But don't make t
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...buying a tablet doesn't mean you don't need a PC....
Depends who you are. If you only watch youtube, email and do IM then you can get rid of the PC entirely, and many folks already do, particularly in the upcoming generation. If you're an old far you still need a PC because otherwise you go stark raving mad trying to enter text, but that's about the only serious difficultly for most people, apart from an app landscape that is more oriented to consuming media the productivity (rapidly changing). I don't need to burden myself with a PC in the form of a laptop,
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Actually talking to folks at the shop tablets are either sitting in a sock drawer or given to the kids to watch vids and play Angry Birds, the adults found them far too limiting compared to their laptops.
For my part, the tablet augments the desktop. Many of the mobile apps are still garbage, so you wind up having to go to the full site which will step all over most tablets no matter which browser you use. And it doesn't take long to run into the limitations of the baby version of Photoshop, either. But on the other hand, a lot of people only do trivial things with their tablet, and if they had a bluetooth (or physically connected) keyboard to work with, and a micro-hdmi cable for their tablet, they really c
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"But by the same token, what does Joe or Jane average do on a PC that a quad-core tablet with 2GB RAM can't do?"
Uhhh...block ads,
Does that. Can't imagine an unrooted Android device without Adblock Plus.
run full programs instead of a stripped down app version
Right, most people aren't gonna care, because most people don't use all the features. They use a couple of filters in their photo editing software, that's it. They will never use complex layout in Word. Etc.
have multiple programs running without felling like you are on a P2 running Win98
Most people only switch between a couple of programs, a 2GB RAM Android device does that fine. I admit 1GB is a little cramped, but 2GB isn't hard to come by any more.
be able to type quickly (I have yet to see a tablet keyboard that didn't feel worse than a first gen chiclet netbook or didn't make the unit more unwieldy than a netbook)
The Asus Transformer devices are not significantly more unwieldy
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While I generally agree with much of what you have to say, e.g. things like desktops are here to stay, I also don't think the desktop market is ever going to recover. I think that the number of people who need them at home is doing to continue to decrease as tablets do the things they do on one end, and STBs do them on the other. Again, this is for the home user. All the reasons to use desktops in the corporate space are still there. It only occasionally makes sense to throw that away and move to a portable
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Re. "futurists", change does happen but usually in unexpected ways.
Re. "fads", it is a bit like wind farms; lots of enthusiasm and claims of changing the world, but only time will tell whether it works — see "unexpected" above.
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Two different markets (Score:4, Insightful)
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Bullshit.
Smartwatches are for people who want a smartphone on their wrist. Period.
Watches which aren't smart watches are for people who want to tell the time, without the need for connectivity, and without the need to recharge the damned thing constantly. You know, what watches have been for a very long time.
My solar powered digital watch will pretty much never need to be charged as long as I expose it to sunlight. My wife's Citizen eco-drive analog watch will simply never need to be charged as long as s
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Smartwatches are for people who want a smartphone on their wrist. Period.
I don't disagree with what a lot of what you're saying, but I don't agree with this particular statement.
Now, I am a smartwatch-wearer. I realize I'm not going to convince you that I find it extremely useful for both connected and non-connected purposes (moreso the latter than the former in my case, actually), but I don't believe that smartwatch users mistake it for the primary communications device, but rather an augment, or an assist, or a companion to it.
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Though it's pretty durable, I do have to be careful with it in some ways.
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Honestly, the only people I've ever known who spent more than $5K on a watch ... they also had expensive cars, tailored suits, and don't give a fuck about what people think either.
That guy in the three piece Italian suit with the gold cufflinks, the Ferrari, and the $15K Rolex ... he doesn't give a crap if you're impressed or not ... and he's beyond the point of needing to spend his money wisely or not. But he's sure as hell not wearing a $20 Timex from Wal Mart.
The guy who drives the beat up car who works
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You have succumbed to the very protestant "rich people are better people" fallacy.
The millionaire with the gold Rolex Mariner is not concerned how I feel about it, but he is very concerned about how his peers do.
It is basic human nature, really.
Just as it is basic human nature that you are desperately trying to impress fellow slashdotters with you have been rubbing elbows with very rich people.
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yeah so you're saying that there doesn't exist clubs for carsharing ferraris? (there does, to impress dolts).
also, I was amazed that asians run fucking watch-share clubs. where they buy an expensive watch and everyone gets to keep it a week at a time to impress his friends.
also there's people who buy them as investments, asians as well. they buy them like they would buy gold. the iWatch is a horrible substitute for that.
iWatch might eat into pebble and other 70-100 bucks semi-expensive dolt watch sales.. bu
Not just wearables but the basic cell phone too (Score:3)
Wearables are just the latest device in a long string of devices reducing the utility of a wrist watch.
My watch wouldn't get used at all if it were not for scuba diving. Besides being old I'm also a software engineer, analog depth gauge and analog watch to backup that dive computer.
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I stopped wearing a watch about 20 years ago because there was always a clock wherever I was, either on my computer, laptop, cell phone, car dashboard, departure gate, whatever When phones got small enough and rugged enough to be always in the pocket, well, presto, return of the pocket watch. Strongly agree that watches won't be for telling time any more. They will be for... wait for it.... watching.
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I like having a watch to be on a consistent time. I find the various clocks (other than computer clocks) to be not on a consistent time, being off 5 minutes in both directions overall.
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I have a phone, what do I need a watch for?
There are a couple of places I regularly go where I am either not allowed to or choose not to take my phone. Some of those places do not have clocks, so if I want to keep track of time I wear a cheap wristwatch.
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Cellphones responsible not Apple watch. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry I don't buy it. I think the fact that everyone carries cellphones and every cellphone displays the time on the face is what is behind his watch slump. I haven't worn a watch in years and it has nothing to do with apple's product.
They've been going about it wrong for years (Score:2)
I used to get the New York Times almost every day, usually through school or my gym. Every day, I'd see advertisements from the big Swiss watchmakers, usually full-page and usually showing off detailed shots of the insides of the watches. That right there signifies what their market is - older people with lots of money. There's no way I could've afforded one back then, and though I probably could afford one if I saved long enough now, I have no reason to do so. Wearing a high-end watch is one more thing I h
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I can certainly respect the amount of obstinately mechanical
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and start offering "Swiss-style" smartwatches at a reasonable price.
Er... a "Swiss watch" means it is driven by mechanical gears as opposed to batteries and/or quartz. ie a swiss smartwatch is an oxymoron, which is why Swiss watches are favoured by rich people. It's not there to tell the time, it's their to demonstrate how much money you have, AND the fact you don't actually need it for anything (ie just like a diamond ring)
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Swatch group (based in Biel) includes Breguet, Omega & Longines. And Flik-Flak. All as Swiss as cheese with holes in it.
There is actually a strategy behind this, not that you'd get it.
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Rolex makes some relatively cheap watches. The ones I've seen in shops (and therefore probably cheaper online) start at around £250. They are, however, monumentally ugly. They're part of the trend in mens watches that say 'I need to assert my masculinity by showing that I can lug a big lump of metal around on my wrist all day'. The only watchmaker that I know of that makes watches that are aimed at people who appreciate good industrial design and want a watch that is easy to ready but very light i
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They're part of the trend in mens watches that say 'I need to assert my masculinity by showing that I can lug a big lump of metal around on my wrist all day'.
It's probably more of a women respond to displays of wealth [psychologytoday.com] trend. They really do [springer.com]. The good news is that it's a lot easier to change your socioeconomic status than your physical features.
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I think you must be mistaken. I am not aware of any even old and not fake Rolex in the price range of around £250. They start at a multiple of that.
watches as a functional thing.. (Score:2)
... are extinct. People I know that still have watches, most of them have watches as a fashion statement. It's a jewelry.
Other groups I'm aware of are old people who need glasses to see their phone screen, and "some" rich people to show off. Who the f needs a $1000+ USD watch ? Never mind $5k+.
Eventually they gonna disappear all together same as pocket watches did.
It's called evolution. Either you keep with the times or eventually you loose your business and get forgotten.
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Either you keep with the times
I can't do that without wearing a time-piece, you insensitive clod!
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... are extinct. People I know that still have watches, most of them have watches as a fashion statement. It's a jewelry.
Other groups I'm aware of are old people who need glasses to see their phone screen, and "some" rich people to show off. Who the f needs a $1000+ USD watch ? Never mind $5k+.
Eventually they gonna disappear all together same as pocket watches did.
It's called evolution. Either you keep with the times or eventually you loose your business and get forgotten.
I have a $1000 watch that I enjoy wearing. It has a legitimately sealed case (up to 300m of water resistance), and looks very stylish. Sometimes I go through phases where I wear it every day to work. Most of the time, however, I just wear it to special events, on dates, or at important business meetings. It's made of titanium, so it's not very "blingy" but it looks very nice. Women usually comment on it, but no one else ever does. Certainly not any of my coworkers. But it does help you look like you
Fossils (Score:3)
I'm not really their market, not wearing a watch or having any use for wearables, but do you really think there's much overlap between the group of people who will buy a high-tech smart watch, and the group of people who would buy technology of any sort from a company called Fossil?
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Fossil isn't Swiss, so I'm not sure he's even talking about his own products.
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Haha... (Score:5, Funny)
Summary (Score:3)
A current fad favors one kind of overpriced status symbol over another. News at eleven!
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... Certainly the cell phone is a bigger problem? (Score:2)
... I mean... I haven't had a watch in years. Why? I carry around this cell phone with me everywhere like a pocket watch. The damn thing is linked into atomic clocks and changes times based on what time zone it is in... its got more elaborate warnings etc than any watch could claim.
And lets not forget that the "EVIL iWATCH"... is really just slaved to the stupid phone in the first place. Its the cell phone killing the watch.
Not the wearables. At this point, the watch is basically a fashion accessory. Sort o
Fossil Abacus - My first Smart Watch (Score:3)
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Fossil can't speak for the Swiss industry (Score:2)
Fossil is a maker of cheap fashion watches. Stuff people tend to throw out or forget about when the battery dies. I'd imagine these would be easily replaceable by other watches worn to be trendy and with a relatively short expected lifespan (see smart watch). I'm not knocking Fossil by the way. They are a nice watch in their target market.
These watches are in an entirely different category from the heirloom Swiss watches. Watches with mechanical movements and top quality cases assembled by craftspeople
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Self-winding Seiko. I wear it from time to time as jewelry. A digital watch is useless as jewelry, it's mainly good for achieving that fossilized look, just right for a PTA meeting.
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Mechanical watches will always be a niche market and will never go away.
I wouldn't bet on that. Grandfather clocks went away. Typewriters went away. Neckties are in advanced stages of going away. I am sure somebody out there still has a grandfather clock, and there will be a few diehards with Rolexes, but the real limiting factor is, the legendary Oyster mainly makes you look like an asshole out to commit a fashion crime. Right up there with plaid suits. Sure, get an Armani plaid suit, it's still a plaid suit.
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If they manage to get it to the point where they can use a mechanical action to recharge a usable computer with readable touchscreen display, complete with short range radio, then that gets it over the trinket hump... I would drop some spare change on that. I don't see it taking the world by storm.
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"Better" is highly subjective.... Sure, the smart watches might do more stuff, but unless one actually needs regular use of the extra features that a smart watch offers beyond a regular watch, all a smart watch ends up being is more of a cell-phone accessory that is usually not as tolerant to hostile environments as many watches that are made today are, such as being able to safely go under water (at least to depths that do not require any special equipment to reach) and still be usable. Additionally, no