“The Apple Watch may not be hitting stores until April, but many of the world’s leading watchmakers haven’t been shy in sharing their opinions on the hotly anticipated device,” Phil Han reports for CNBC. “At the watch industry’s leading trade show, BaselWorld in Switzerland, many companies were debating whether to head high-tech or stick with a centuries-old formula of watchmaking.”
“Watchmaker Longines said that it was not involved in developing a smartwatch. ‘We respect the brands that have the courage to go in this field, (but) Longines will not go in this field. We will stay with our traditional analogue watches,’ President Walter von Kanel told CNBC.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We love the smell of fear in the morning!
He’s right you know. You need an iPhone and everyone knows that iPhone users have no idea how to use those 2 billion functions.
s/
iPhone users don’t know how to use more than two functions on the phone.
Well, I know (1) how to talk and (2) how to listen on my iPhone. You mean to tell me there’s MORE I could be doing with it?!
Well I’ll be dipped in s**t!!
“McTavish is dead and his brother don’t know it.
His brother is dead, and McTavish don’t know it.
Both of them dead; they’re in the same bed,
And neither one knows that the other is dead.”
That must be one of the functions I don’t understand.
Years ago, a good friend’s father, the VP of a Fortune 50 company said to me, “I see no use for email. I will not learn it.”
Brontosaurial hubris is amusing.
A lot of VPs use to feel that way about doing it themselves. They simply would tell their secretaries to learn and use it. Many presidents and higher executives acted as though they were dirtying their hands using computers. That stuff was strictly for underlings. They’d say to me “Just get me the information and don’t annoy me with the details.” They’d already reached the top and there was nothing more for them to learn.
That form of hubris went far below the VP level in the early days. Many VP wannabes didn’t want to sully their promotability image by having a computer on their desk. Silly boys.
“No one understands”
No one in the dumb watch industry that is…
The assumption that a CEO can speak for all his customers is shallow.
Customers only need “analogue watches” until the “time” they want or need or absolutely demand some more info.
The man grew up in an analog world. What else is expected of him to say? The world at large moves on but some people honestly don’t realize it or don’t care. He’s locked into his own little world. I think he can speak for most of his customers who are only interested in traditional watches. There are probably younger executives in his company who differ in opinion, but this dude will have to retire or die before any changes are to be made within the company.
The key phrase in his statement was “watches are status symbols “. That’s just code for “watches are a way to flash your wallet in public”. But there are many who view true standing in the world with measures beyond money, quite possibly many in his current customer base. If he can only sell to braggarts, his company is in deep trouble.
Functions are called ‘complications’ in the horological world, and they are painstakingly crafted by extremely trained artisans, and release in very, very, limited quantities. This is a world that, sorry, Apple has no place being in. But, hey, no reason to think they should be. Likewise, computers on wrists is not a place Longines should be in, either. Two very different worlds. And just because Apple wraps their painstakingly designed and machine-crafted electronics in solid gold does not a full complication horological device make.
Just like a fine bicycle is not like a fine moon rocket. Both are a marvelous feat of engineering, but one is designed for more advanced levels of transportation use and neither one will ever be mistaken for the other. I still love my bike.
A finely crafted mechanical watch is a thing of beauty and a marvel of mechanical enginering.
An Apple Watch is a a beautiful example of industrial design, modern manufacturing, and a marvel of electrical engineering.
I still marvel at the engineering, craftsmanship, and function of a well made mechanical typewriter and I could still use one, but, I actually use a Mac, an iPad, and an iPhone to perform “Billions” of different functions.
You’ve bridged both worlds and both worlds are grand. This is why I don’t understand all this rivalry about what’s better. It’s not a matter of what’s better. It’s more about what is more suitable to certain individuals. Why can’t both worlds be treasured without one sacrificing the other? I see no way how AppleWatch threatens the traditional watch industry. It just seems absurd that there are people that think this way. I think people just feed off of controversy where none actually exists. To me it’s like arguing over which is better. A fork or a spoon. Both utensils have their specific uses. Both of them are around for a reason. And still someone built a spork which is a useful combination of the two.
Yes. In the words of Stephen Jay Gould- Non-overlapping magisteria.
Guy looks like he needs a good laxative.
I understand all of the functions of the Apple Watch perfectly. This geezer needs to grab a clue or shut the hell up. He’s going to look really stupid after Apple’s watch ships.
And what do you mean “He’s going to look really stupid..”. He opened his mouth talking about a sector and a company he has no clue about. He is acting stupid but maybe the audience listening to him are even more silly listening and I guess we are all even more silly commenting on his stupidity.
Meh
‘We will stay with our traditional analogue watches,’
The beginning of the end of Motorola was when the president of the Cell Phone Sector announced that the consumer did not want a digital phone.
Or Kodak (which squandered its early lead in digital cameras) when it decided that it would take more than a decade for consumers to switch from film to digital.
“We respect the brands that have the courage to go in this field, (but) Longines will not go in this field. We will stay with our traditional [products]”
Might as well as the horse breeders if they will start manufacturing automobiles. Some may say yes. The smart ones will say no. But at the end of the day none of them will be able to to make the jump. They don’t have the ingredients (hardware design & fab, operating system, development platform, app distribution, support, etc, etc.)
There are maybe three companies on the planet who could do this and none of them are based in Switzerland.
Of the three companies that could make a wrist device, only one understands how and why women use technology.
Time alone, oh, time will tell
Think you’re in heaven, but ya living in hell
Think you’re in heaven, but ya living in hell
Think you’re in heaven, but ya living in hell
Time alone, oh, time will tell
Ya think you’re in heaven, but ya living in hell
–Bob Marley
History’s fossils echo strange sounds to contemporary ears.
If everyone shared Walter von Kanel’s opinion, we’d most likely all be using sun dials, fortunately timepieces keep evolving unlike certain CEOs and Presidents. Will someone break the news to him gently and whisper in his ear “Apple Watch is a computer that happens to tell the time”, actually perhaps not we don’t want to induce a cardiac arrest.
Clearly Walter von Känel just read Dvorak’s comment on the original Apple Mouse and thought “that’s a good point; I can use that for the Apple Watch.”
If I was the CEO of a major watch company, this would be my game plan:
• I would first of all not poo poo the Apple Watch . . . because in the short term you can get away with that but in the long term you’ll look really, really silly.
• If asked, I would differentiate my products entirely from it. Maybe even call it a remarkable achievement and interesting direction for technology and that “we’ll be paying close attention to how the market responds.”
• And then I’d get talking and really emphasize the quality of the timepieces, in the classic sense, that my company creates. Whether that be the craftsmanship of the high end models (Rolex) or the beauty and affordability of the sub $400 models.
• Lastly, I’d be working my ass off on a direct competitor to the Apple Watch but would spend the time necessary to make something that is good instead of rushing shit to market.
Now just watch as the CEOs of all of these companies do the exact opposite of what I would do in their position. They’ll come off as arrogant, short-sighted and, eventually, inept.
They are all too busy right now making sure they have their golden parachute in place.
Nah! You got it all wrong. What you should have done is approached Apple and said, “What do you need? My whole company is at your service. We surrender completely to your direction and hope you will consider us worthy enough to be a part of Apple in the future”.
His biggest mistake is in realizing that, like with the iPhone, some people will sacrifice a ‘status symbol’ for practicality and usability. Just because some people can afford a diamond-encrusted euro-phone with a mechanical keypad, doesn’t mean that most of them didn’t buy an iPhone instead.
Same may happen with the Watch. If the features are sufficiently usable, compelling, and/or can improve quality of life, the people that feel like they need a status symbol will go ahead and shell out the big bucks for the Edition. A few may still buy analog watches, perhaps for special events (awards ceremonies, galas, or whatever else the well-dressed rich do), but you’ll definitely see an impact on the analog market, because their day-to-day watch will likely get replaced.
Fifty years ago, in my home town, there were all these watch repair shops. Everybody wore watches, and when they broke down, you would take them to the watch repair shop and they’d fix it for you. The common wisdom was that watch repair was one of the most stable, most secure professions in the world: “As long as there are humans on this planet, they will be measuring time”. Well, there are none of such shops today. All those watch repairmen are out of business, because almost nobody wears mechanical watches anymore.
When someone like Apple walks into someone else’s traditional market space, the dominant players from that market space fall into two categories: those who react with arrogance and indignation, and those who show respect for the new entrant. Most often, there are many more of the former, very few of the latter. Former Swatch CEO is the only one we heard from so far that falls into the second group.
Here at MDN, we love pulling out those arrogant quotes years later, when their companies have been pushed out of existence by the competitor they once so quickly and publicly dismissed. Not to be forgotten:
Ed Colligan (Palm)
Mike Lazarides / Jim Balsillie (RIM / Blackberry)
Steve Ballmer (Microsoft)
Roger McNamee (Elevation Partners)
David Goldstein (
If you can’t remember what they said, google their names plus ‘iPhone quote’.
I know you’ve kept it to the iPhone but from the company overall could Michael Dell be mentioned, kinda dishonorably?
Have a good one Predrag.
But of course, how could I forget! SIDGTMBTS…
Wow…. Sounds like Ballmer, when he laughed at the iPhone for not having a physical keyboard.
Let’s see.. 2 billion functions. If you took 15 seconds per function, that’s 500,000,000 minutes, or 8,333,333 hours, or 347,222 days, or 951 years, so, it doesn’t matter that there are 2 billion functions, since no one will live long enough to use even 1/10th of them all. Don’t worry, be happy!
That would make for one Looooooooooong Apple presentation. 😉
Dick Tracy calling intelligent watchmaker CEO’s,
Dick Tracy calling intelligent watchmaker CEO’s . . .
is ANYONE there?
Kodak proved sticking with the purity of analog products is the way to success.
And perhaps the most important thing for these analog CEO’s to remember is that they are thinking like old people who are used to selling to the last three generations of consumers. Today’s kids are tomorrow’s consumers – they won’t have much interest in yester-tech, just like few people want wind-up watches any more.
If battery life improves and miniaturization continues, the future of smartwatches may produce devices identical in size and appearance to old analog watches, with just as much bling and cachet as his ‘status symbols’. If the traditional watch-makers aren’t on board with that, they’ll be eating dust in a few years.
The days of the analog wrist-device are numbered.
Here is a quote from the original article, by Merica” which says it all IMHO:
““The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present.”
― Alice Morse Earle
Let’s make it simple. An old watch might give the illusion that time goes on forever, but the Apple Watch provides the priceless gift of making the most of the treasured moments of the present, which are irreplaceable.”
Old people tend to say that a lot. Just coz they feel tech is useless to them, its useless to others too.
Gosh what field day read, all right let’s have some fun.
“Can it repaired in 1,000 years or can it be repaired in 80 years?” Biver asked. “Can your children wear the watch? No — because it won’t work anymore! The technology will be gone.”
– Not quite the technology will have evolved, anyone interested in time should know about that, endurance and evolution go hand in flipper.
“A watch is not only giving time, it’s a status symbol and I don’t think you’ll get a status symbol in an Apple Watch with two billion functions that no one understands.”
-Oh believe me it’s a status symbol, those guys walking into bars with a new watch will be getting laid just as much as those walking into bars with iPhones when they first came out, in fact they still do, honest.
That being said I have the highest respect for mechanical time pieces but I don’t see the watch as a time piece, it’s a wearable computer and it will evolve to an ring, an bracelet, necklace, shirt shoes, car, home whatever….
I have several watches. One is a dress watch, one is a sports watch and some just for fun. One day I’ll also have an Apple Watch. It will serve a purpose as well. I may find that I wear the Apple Watch more an more, because of the utility it offers for Apple Pay, etc.
But I also remember that the first iPhone and iPads required iTunes and the phone was tethered to a computer. That is no longer the case. The Apple Watch will be the same. Apple Watch 3 won’t require an iPhone, the Apple Watch 4 may replace the iPhone and have bluetooth to headset and have included mini projector. Of course that is all unnecessary when you can watch movies on your Apple Car 7k screen while it autodrives you to work.
“.. with two billion functions that no one understands”
Herr von Känel,
Maybe you wont understand nor your children, but your grandchildren will. They are the future.
“.. with two billion functions that no one understands”
Yea, I can think of one person that doesn’t understand it.