Dumb watches are now stupid
A few weeks ago, I was in Zurich and was reminded once again that are watch stores everywhere in Switzerland. Obviously Swiss mechanical timekeeping is a legendary though significantly outdated1, concept, but as I was jogging by a few, I wondered “Seriously, who buys these anymore?”
Bit of history: I’ve long thought watches looked cool. I had the original (and now cool again) Casio watch when I was a kid and the Casio calculator watch. I wore watches through high school and college, but I broke my watch after completing my last final in college2, and didn’t replace it, so I didn’t wear a watch for a long time. For many years, I thought, well maybe I would spend a lot of money on a really cool looking watch like James Bond had.
Instead, what happened was I got into tracking fitness in 2012. As I mentioned in my post about the Apple Watch Ultra, I’ve had a series of Garmin watches. Before the Fenix and its all-day tracking, I didn’t really have any reason to wear my Garmin watch other than when working out. The Forerunner 110 or 220 weren’t fashionable to be all-day watches for any occasion.
However, I had developed a serious tan-line from being outside running with my Garmin. To cover up the tan line when not working out, I bought several cheap but good looking Timex watches (Example one, Example two) It was only when I got the Fenix, which does body tracking as well as sleep tracking, I started to wear that all the time.
For the past year, I’ve been consistently wearing the Fenix, and now Apple Watch Ultra, all day long and while I sleep. I’ve learned a lot about my sleep and what affects it. I’ve learned a bunch about my fitness training and am making progress on that. Plus, with the AWU, now I have a substitute for my phone, and use my phone less.
So I cannot imagine why I would spend money on a “dumb” watch ever again. What’s the point? I would get none of the usefulness or metrics that I get when wearing a smartwatch, just the time and a date.
People predicted that dumb watches were doomed when the Apple Watch originally came out. Jony Ive even tried to pitch that $17K version to compete against high end fashion watches. That was obviously premature, but I think the time might be starting now. Smart watches have reached a really great level of functionality, and in the economic downturn, there will be fewer people willing to drop thousands, or even hundreds, on watches that don’t do anything except tell time. I think more people would rather have smartwatch functionality and all-day body metrics than try to show off money3 with a cool looking, expensive, dumb watch.
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At least since the 1970s, when quartz watches took off. I don’t know if there was any previous point. ↩︎
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True story! It fell off the desk as I was pulling together the papers to hand in. ↩︎
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It actually seems like the people who wear these watches mostly want others to think they have lots of money, than actually have lots of money. Maybe there are an endless stream of people like that, and that’s what’s keeping expensive dumb watches going as a business? It seems like if dumb watches are just jewlery and someone wants to show off that they have money, maybe it’s better to wear an expensive bracelet next to your Apple Watch than to buy a barely useful Seamaster 007 Edition for $10K. ↩︎