1. Non smart watches will be viewed as pure fashion with no function.
2. A large proportion of society will be uncomfortable with that.
3. Those who continue to wear them will be the sort of people who make them unfashionable.

There is an argument out there that Apple watch is a flop. It’s only sold a few million. I’m not going to argue too much about whether a new billion dollar market created in a month or so is a flop. I’ve been asked to think more about smart watches in the general narrative of the watch.

My initial thoughts have been that  I use mine a lot, mostly for time but also for notifications, exercise and communication. Anyway, if I am not wearing it, I am not a happy bunny. The odd thing is that I am not unhappy in a way that I can describe, after all we all know the anxiety created by not having our mobile, we feel disconnected from things in general. This is a far more personalised feeling of being disconnected from time.

For me the larger narrative here isn’t about the apple watch, its about peripherals as a whole, where they live and what functions they provide.

Accurate time has been sold as a luxury for years, with brands specialising in providing accuracy in various different situations through different aspects of craftsmanship. Depth certification, split second chronography, day, date, lunar calendars, altitude certification etc.
Then the quartz crisis commodified accuracy and much functionality. Overnight Switzerland lost a vast raft of its horological workforce and a huge amount of market share. Since then CAD, 3D printing, lean and robotic manufacturing has to an extent also commodified craftsmanship, but the brand value of “Swiss made” still exists.

This has narrowed many traditional time pieces to smaller market segments, catering to an extreme high end, through brand exclusivity rather than functionality.

Brands give customers a very public badge of wealth through exclusive access to the unique narrative based exclusively on heritage & mechanical craftsmanship that particular brand provides.

And I am in no way arguing against this. If people differentiate watch value through brand history, it is irrelevant if a function is commodified or not. Its just like clothing or foot-wear branding. It’s fashion pure and simple.

What is important is that when a large chunk of product exclusivity is branding with function broadly commodified, suddenly finding your product is sub functional is a huge risk. If your product becomes viewed as a relatively functionless piece of fashion and nothing else, that could be a nightmare.

Smart watches will start offering increasingly useful and unique personal functions with amazing craftsmanship, at all price ranges, for all lifestyles. Whats more people will soon be comfortable with walking around in a ‘personal cloud’ of multiple devices, all communicating with each other as well as the wider internet of things and an overarching conventional cloud. And to relate back to my Apple watch experience: By ‘comfortable with’ I mean ‘uncomfortable without’.

Watches will become inextricably associated with, (and so become a highly visible indicator) of a fully connected and functional life. In other words these peripherals will become part of process of life and the act of living in general.

The old brands may be viewed as the habitat of the living dead, a niche folly for the disconnected, particularly if they are only worn by very particular social groups. Having spent decades and billions creating and bludgeoning home a narrative of exclusive value not through any new function but rather heritage and the number of cogs or springs, watch makers might want to start looking forwards.

Expect to see a repositioning.