On the Future of Wrist Watches, and How Established Tech and Modern Day Branding Could be Joining Forces
On paper, the future of wristwatches would be unobtrusive tech concealed within a regular looking watch. There is the technology and there are the brands that can rally consumers, but the two haven’t been put together yet…
Imagine a watch that doesn’t require attention but is always on time whenever you pick it up, no matter how long you have left it standing still.
It always shows the correct time and date (even daylight saving time), and if you travel to another location, it notices and automatically switches to the matching time zone.
We are halfway there.
The Astron from Seiko keeps itself charged via a photovoltaic cell integrated in the dial. It’s the closest thing to unobtrusive tech.
You don’t need a smartphone. You don’t need a charger. You don’t need to worry about firmware or software updates.
The only caveat is that in order to amortise its R&D costs, Seiko is marketing this product as premium – entering the $1,500+ premium core price segment.
However, I am not sure that even if this technology can one day be offered in what Erwin Rambourg calls the *affordable luxury* segment (sub $300) it will sell like hot cakes.
Solar watches are not new: the first commercial version dates from 1972 (The First Solar-Powered Watch Was Far Ahead of Its Time (https://www.gearpatrol.com/watches/a575261/watchmaking-firsts-solar-powered-watch/)) and the first wrist watch that used an external time base was the 1990 Junghans Mega 1 (Junghans Mega 1 – 20th Century Watches (https://20centurywatches.com/junghans-mega-1/)).
Besides the German based Junghans, the Japanese Citizen, Seiko and Casio have all put efforts towards remaining at the cutting edge of solar and signal based technology.
Still, in the last 30 years, customers have not been rushing in droves towards solar or signal based watches… because it seems that they actually don’t care. Or at least the old fashioned branding behind it offers a tune that is not catchy.
For most consumers, the fact that a watch works without a solar cell or a time signal does not seem to be a dealbreaker.
I would speculate that watches have for most of their existence been primarily perceived either as a fashion accessory, jewellery, or a work of art. Or all the above.
It might turn out that their manufacturing process does emit greenhouse gas emissions, but watches are not the first type of product that comes to mind when one things of tackling global warming.
Because of that, consumers don’t seem to feel a sense of urgency for switching to greener alternatives such as solar watches. With cars, we can sense that once that manufacturers will be able to offer an affordable electric car that can cover 500 to 600 km (300 to 370 miles), most consumers might switch without looking back.
If we consider that brands like Daniel Wellington have probably outsold similar products made by Citizen with the same movements and in the same factories. Belonging to the group of Daniel Wellington followers is the very equity of the brand.
In order to differentiate themselves, some of these brands have started to bet on sustainability as a value proposition. At the moment these marketing savvy brands can only use the technology that manufacturers like Seiko are making available to third parties, such as low tech solar movements. If they were given access to something such as Seiko’s GPS solar technology, they would bring their acumen in rallying consumers behind a common vision to the table and the thing might actually take off.
