Three points absent from the Smartwatch debate

There are those who are surfing the wave of a global buzz just to have their voice heard. Like the "dramatologist"  Xavier Comtesse in Hebdo magazine.This very anxious writer is convinced that a tsunami similar to the quartz crisis, but even worse, is about to smother the Swiss watchmaking industry. There are also generalist journalists with big voices who are surprised by the apparent lethargy of the industry in the face of this phenomenon. Are they aware of the fact that for the past 200 years, watchmakers have been innovating, inventing, and pushing trends?

Take the tactile technology for the sapphire crystal: Assulab, a subsidiary of Swatch Group specialized in R&D had full command of it, and then Tissot used it for the T-Touch. That was well before the iPhone invasion changed the face of global telephony. Same thing with the connected watch: the intelligent Swatch has been around for over ten years, and lets the user pay for ski lifts remotely and without any wires. It could also have served for other forms of payment had the research been carried through to the end. Maybe it is because this stuff is well-known in the watchmaking industry that no one is terribly upset about the news from Cupertino.

Tissot T-Touch Expert Solar

And while the ink flows and flows and opinions collide, three thoughts, of which one is a proposition, go unmentioned.Let us have a look at the evidence:

Planned obsolescence, the anti-value of watchmaking

It has been written that the iPhone 5's vocation is to make everyone forget the 4 and the 3, whether they be followed by an S or not! The latest version always pushes out the previous one, casting it into an oblivion that thrills the salespeople and lures the shareholders.Moreover, a large-format iPad will come replace it or extend its lifecycle, followed by a second iPad, smaller, dangerously close to the size of the last iPhone, in fact, with its larger screen.So there is a dimension that is completely foreign to watchmaking in the commercial logic and business model of these objects, which are supposed to be "horological" and are called intelligent.

Indeed, everything in watchmaking accumulates, becomes added.If the last watch you bought momentarily dethrones the one you were wearing just before, nothing will prevent the previous one from proudly regaining its place on your wrist once the excitement of the novelty has worn off. And that watch will easily leave its space to some inherited timepiece, to a watch received as a gift, to a symbolic watch, or one that serves as a status symbol.None of the watches will be rejected, each will be adored. Logically, the iWatch phenomenon, were it fed by regular updates, has no other alternative but to be an ephemeral phenomenon. Even though …

The endless quest for free hands

What would we do without that second hand, which is necessary for the proper functioning of our iPhone and hence our iWatch? A second hand that once upon a time held a stylus. And which, with practice and when sending text messages, ultimately transformed our thumb into a hopping little index finger. The iPhones and their versions, and all brands combined, have changed our extremities creating a series of gestures that are performed and accepted throughout the world. And that in spite of indisputably giant steps done by voice-recognition systems  and their special envoys, Siri and her counterparts.

Apple Watch

Ultimately, the research in this field can only go in one direction, towards the supreme Holy Grail, total "hands-free."These will be intelligent devices that will read your looks, perceive your intentions and, above all, free you of your second, cumbersome, hand forevermore. The same way that a Bluetooth headphone can free you of tangled wires. It's so much more comfortable. The advances that surround those multifunctional objects will one day offer (the technologies are already available) the luxury of luxuries:  doing away with the device altogether. This inevitable quest is embedded in the very genes of these machines. And becoming conscious of this makes it difficult to imagine that these iWatches are not just on our wrists temporarily.In the same way that the functions integrated into the iPhone today is moving towards the wrist, they are not intended to stay there. They are going to migrate, once it is possible, towards your glasses, your ears, your windscreen, or, once invented, mobile screens, or onto surrounding surfaces.

Second wrist or pocket mode

By the way, that "second hand," which may well sign the death warrant of the smartwatch, remains a second wrist, hence a space of opportunity.I am surprised that the watch brands never thought of it. Or only very little. Apparently they did not see the opening, the great opportunity to pump up their watch sales, regardless of whence the wind was blowing.If they could drop their reprehensible, obsessive individualism, they would be able to take the bull by the horns and unanimously use the international buzz about smartwatches to broadcast an innovative idea: the fashion of wearing a watch on each wrist.This fashion was already popular with watchmakers themselves, or with fans and collectors. Both their wrists were occupied. The number of those dedicated to this practice is growing.

Applying a tiny portion of the means at its disposal, the brands could offer themselves some advertising space in the main media of the planet to launch this trend. The idea is not that kooky, if you compare it with, say, that memorable collective campaign initiated by the global players in the diamond industry. Their slogan is still in everyone's mind: "A diamond is forever."Who financed it?A consortium of economic interest groups managed to get together for the everyone's benefit. Historically, the watch industry, irrespective of brand, also proceeded in that manner to foster sales of chronographs. This goes back to a time when the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry maintained statutes that clearly stipulated this form of communication. The result?Sales and export of watches featuring a chronograph function surged.

Another track: the pocket watch. How come no player in the industry failed to take advantage of the global media hubbub to relaunch the well-known timekeeper on a fob. This form of a watch is actually present in many a catalogue. Could it be the birth of a trend? Faced with such a powder keg of opportunities, it appears strange to me that no one thought about lighting the fuse. And be that just to see where the pieces might fall…