Ran across this article from several months ago about an aspect I had never considered in the back and forth over what functions should be packed into a cell phone. I found it while searching around for a replacement watchband. Now it’s got me wondering why am I still wearing a watch since I have two cell phones, both of which automatically switch time zones as I travel across the country.
After the depressed economic climate caused by SARS and the war in Iraq, watch makers at the Baselworld international watch and jewellery fair are bracing for a new challenge to their declining sales: the cellphone.
“Youngsters don’t have a watch anymore today. If they want to know the time, they look at their mobile, which never leaves them,” said Patrick Besnard, a representative for the French watchmaking industry at the fair.
Five years after the cheaper and fashionable Swiss brand Swatch showed off a prototype wristwatch with a mobile phone, the cellphone and its onscreen clock seems to have gained the upper hand.
Swatch dropped the planned wristwatch-phone because of the technical limitations linked to its small size.
Far from being nostalgic about the days when watches were not worn on one’s wrist but in one’s pocket, the industry regards items like the cellphone as a genuine threat to cheap watches.
My guess is wristwatches won’t come back until Apple releases the iWrist or iWatch version of the iPod.
Maybe I’m a throwback, but I only carry a cell phone when I’m expecting a call or think I’ll need to make one. On the other hand (so to speak), my watch is always on my wrist.
Another throwback (translated “old fart”) that’s never without a watch but only uses a cell phone to make or receive a call. I laugh out loud at all the people running around with cell phones on their belt. I wonder what phone call must be so important that they can’t afford to miss it.
Art Linketter was right – people are funny!
I haven’t worn a watch in years. I have a cell, a pager and a PDA. Why would I need a watch?
I don’t have a PDA (no need) or a pager(voice messaging and SMS on my cell phone replace the pager of course), though I do have an iPod and a laptop PC. My cell phone does have a time feature, but it doesn’t have an alarm (four of them), a stopwatch, or the phase of the moon like my watch does (I’m a very amateur astronomer–one looks at faint fuzzies when the moon is new or in quarter phase or less).
I’ll keep the watch, thankyouverymuch.
psst – My cell phone already has a clock on it. Don’t tell anyone.
I was at work the other day showing off my (way too big) LG LX7000, and one of the people was talking about how he tries to get the very smallest phone possible. I guess this phone would appeal to him.
How hard is it to clip a cell phone on your belt? Put it with your house keys, and you won’t forget them. Well unless you forget your hosue keys, but that’s another issue.