Our changing relationship with wristwatches

An Apple Watch juxtaposed with a classic wrist watch. Shutterstock

Has the market takeover of smartwatches changed our relationship with wristwatches?

Two weeks from now, the Apple Watch will turn six. The multinational tech-giant had announced the smartwatch in its keynote on September 12, 2014, hitting the markets the following April.

In these six years, Apple has steered past the decades-old Swiss watch industry as a whole. The tech company is now the world’s biggest watch manufacturer.

“Apple Watch shipped 30.7 million units worldwide in 2019, growing…from 22.5 million in 2018” while “the entire Swiss watch industry together shipped 21.1 million units worldwide in 2019, falling…from 24.2 million in 2018,” read a report released by Strategy Analytics, a Boston-based research and consulting firm in February 2020.

Designs from the Apple Watch Series 5; the activity tracker on a Garmin smartwatch

Despite the disruptions of COVID-19 affecting even the biggest luxury watch players and their export markets, the global smartwatch industry has seen a 20 per cent increase in market revenue in the first half of 2020. The companies leading this? Apple, fellow American tech brand Garmin, and the Chinese brand Huawei, according to a report released just last week, by Counterpoint Research.

Has this surge in smartwatch popularity changed our relationship with traditional watches and the purpose for which we look at our wrists?

Not as much as one might imagine.

The Wrist as Prime Real Estate

Horological history recalls that wristwatches were originally made for women; men carried pocket watches. This started to change in the late 1800s when aviators and military men needed their hands free for their jobs, yet be able to keep an eye on the time.

The wrist became a convenient and prime real estate. Wristwatches, in that sense, have always been at the forefront of utility-oriented wearable tech.

Fast forward to the 21st century and it might seem that the mobile phone, in how it momentarily replaced the need to wear a watch, was our modern version of the pocket watch.

In 2018, Hodinkee, a platform for horology enthusiasts asked Jean Claude Biver, legendary watchmaker and former head of LVMH’s watch division, if he thought that the “point of connectivity is shifting from the mobile phone to the wrist.” Biver agreed: “…the wrist is the best place for your information system. That is why today we sell much more wrist watches, and that is why tomorrow the connected wristwatch will be more important.”
The groundwork for connected wristwatches had begun even in the pre-Bluetooth 1980s, with Seiko’s clunky Pulsar, in the 1990s with their OnHand PC, and in the early 2000s with Microsoft’s SPOT (Smart Personal Object Technology). The 2010s saw the beginnings of an additional health-push in wrist wear with the likes of Nike+ FuelBand and Pebble.

When Apple stepped into the market, it took elements from all of these predecessors, and boosted them with the simple and aesthetic UI/UX (user interface/user experience) upgrades the company is known for.

Everyday Premium-Economy

“Apple reclaimed real estate on the wrists of people who thought the phone replaced the watch in utility,” says Sidin Vadukut, a journalist who has tracked the watch industry for years, adding that “the vast swathe of affordable Swiss brands, below premium and luxury, did not see this coming. It’s not that they didn’t understand tech, but to this day, the Swiss watch industry does not understand UI/UX. Remember, this is an industry that till 2016-2017, gave out press kits in CDs.”

When I gave in to the hype a few months ago, the transition from my mechanical HMT Janata wasn’t just seamless, it was exciting. The wind-up white-dial that sat on my wrist until then could only offer me, in addition to the time, the romance of marvelling at its smooth non-quartz movement. The HMT reminded me of what Orhan Pamuk wrote in ‘My Wristwatches’ (Other Colors: Essays and a Story, 1999), “…I shall never buy a digital watch. Digital watches represent…particles of time as numbers, whereas the face of my watch is a mysterious icon. I love to look at it.”

The Apple Watch, and other connected-watches and bands, are anything but mysterious. If a basic Fitbit demystifies how well I have slept or how much I walked today, the Apple Watch does this in addition to taking an ECG in 30 seconds and telling me what my day has in store — whether a scheduled meeting or a predicted rainstorm.

The romance these devices offer, especially if one is a geek for health and tech advancements, is that of a constantly evolving new future. There are already reports of the Apple Watch (models equipped with fall detect sensors) helping the elderly: it records a fall, and can alert either an emergency contact, or, in more systematised societies, call medical services.

Redefining Luxury?

“I’ll never buy a smartwatch,” declares Tarun Oblum. The 28-year-old Hyderabad based founder of an eponymous leather crafts label is a passionate watch collector, amassing timepieces made post World War II to the 1970’s, to reflect a period of history in which he’s interested.

Oblum says that the watch you wear must reflect something of your personality. Gaurav Mehta, founder of Jaipur Watch Co echoes Oblum when he says, “The kind of a watch a man wears speaks a lot about him.”

But the Apple Watch, offers smart “social signalling”, says Vadukut. “If you are sporty and wearing an Apple Watch, it says something, but if you are in formals and wearing an Apple Watch, it means that ‘no, but I am also a sporty, techie person’,” he adds, suggesting that luxury watches especially from the Swiss industry, “really struggle to say more than one thing”.

For a long time, the thrall of traditional, high-priced luxury watch has stemmed from its longevity. Smartwatches, by their very nature of software dependency need to be upgraded often. Brands like Tag Heuer have tried entering the connected watch market, but with very little success.

With its price and longevity, the luxury watch has long been a quintessential candidate for a family heirloom or a milestone-marking gift. Luxury watch brands even sponsor stories to reflect age-old continuity. For example, Rolex partners as the “official timekeeper” of Wimbledon, the most traditionalist of competitions in sport. Swiss watch brand Panerai keeps alive its origins to service the navy; Mohit Hemdev, head of Panerai India recalls an event from two years ago when the brand offered select buyers an exclusive two-day experience on the Italian Navy base.

Is this storyfication of history the only luxury? How about the luxury of freeing one from screen time? We have all picked up our phones to catch the time, but ended up losing chunks of it to consequent mindless scrolling. How about the luxury of minimalism — who wants the clutter of a health band on one hand, a timepiece on another — a concept coming to us now from Japan, the same place where the Swiss watch industry’s Quartz Crisis originated in the ’70s and ’80s?

How about a luxury that stems not from the exclusivity, esotericism, or monogrammed-personalisation, but a futuristic utility-based one, in keeping with the wristwatch’s roots?

Strip it bare of intellectual and sartorial snobbery — and whether it is a manual HMT, a quartz movement Swatch, a G-Shock beater watch, an Apple Watch, the Omega Moonwatch, or the Patek Phillipe Grandmaster Chime that sold in November last year for $31million (over ₹22 crore) becoming the most expensive in the world — the watch is a tool. We may not all take a step onto the moon, but we’re all increasingly interested in the steps we take in a day on earth, while also being concerned about how much time we have left to meet a deadline. The recent market success of the smartwatch, especially the Apple Watch, is only testament to this.

This essay was first published here