“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.
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MacDailyNews Take: We love the smell of fear in the morning!
Stick with the watches. Whatever market this smart watch fad turns out to be, Apple will have it cornered.
It seems that Longines produces about 1,000,000 watches per year. This is a gross estimate based on serial number blocks allocated to each year. It it not a WAG (wild assed guess) but a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess. Apple will probably sell that the first week it goes on sale. I don’t think that the stock value, if they have stock, comes anywhere near the stock value of Apple Inc. The world is divided into this who only need a watch, those who don’t need a watch, and those who need more than a watch. Which one are you. I do know that people who buy Longines are those who still use analog watches and love them and can afford them. My hat is off to those people. But remember they sell about 1,000,000 watches to less than 1,000,000 customers each year. And they sell zero watches to customers who want more than a just a watch. You cand own both types of watches because to wear the watch or devise that is appropriate for the situation you are going to. There is no wrong answer.
Just an additional thought. The digital quartz and the analog quartz watches were invented in Switzerland. They thought so little of these watches that they showed them at the Basel Watch show back in the 50s or early 60s without patenting them first. Because of that they lost the largest part of the watch market to companies that had never made a watch in their history and made the majority of watches made to this day.
Transparant touchscreen tech may have advanced to the point where for small screen areas like writstwatches may be an option allowing the screen to be used in tandem with traditional watch mechanics. Who knows what they’ll come up with.