This again happens to be another futile attempt at covering the occasional – now a bit old – dire warnings of modern electronics sucking out the lifeblood off watch-crafting as we mostly know it today. If that’s a little hard to understand, it is the chewed-dry remnants of the smart versus classic watches debate.

The bemusement credits belong to the watch-enthusiast press. Tales of premonitions always sell, so making the usual watch industry face an approaching terrible crisis (at least fictitiously; through creative threats) coming from smart watches is all about networked information. There’s no denying the potential of smart watches to offer up everything from the usual and extending into more exotic data (like biometrics); it would be foolish to deny these certainly remarkable pieces of technology. They are a separate class with no clashes with the watches the way we know them. The collapse of the current watch-making concepts for smart watches are here – is absurd! Maybe a couple of hundred years from now, when we all are gone and none to mourn the demise!

It has been a mistaken assumption that smart watches will soon drive out the mechanicals from business. Did we look at the products the way they serve their purpose? They could never be same –like your clothes! You don’t wear gym or trekking outfit to weddings and award ceremonies; if you still want to look tech-savvy, there are quite a few marvellous complications to choose from the mechanical and quartz domains.

To be honest, this prediction on the forthcoming demise provokes conversation than imposing a serious opinion.  The smart watch’s technical advantage is an evolution from the multifunctional quartz and sometimes, mechanical watches. Digital watches (sometimes sensor-enabled) can provide more than time, date, month and year including world time, temperature, barometric pressure and compass. Stopwatch, alarms, countdown timers…the list is pretty long! The advent of quartz timekeeping, despite precipitating a crisis in traditional watch- making norms, but the industry learnt from it. Niche alternatives will always be at the low-end of luxury; a flat-out plutocratic statement! At the high-end, only arts and artists exist, far beyond the comprehension of programmed machines building components or assembling parts.

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From a different angle, some might question about wearing what fits your lifestyle. And there’s the answer! Every person in this world has a different lifestyle. So traditional watches shall also adorn the wrist of some like the smart watch will – to another crowd! If utility had been the only deciding factor, we wouldn’t have Lamborghini’s, Jaguars and Maserati-s or that Harley shining on the pavement. Combat boots would drive out John Lobb from business! That would be incredibly disruptive and destructive, my gut feeling says.

Watch(es) mentioned in this post are listed below. Click to see details and buy them:

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