Appeal to consumers of luxury watches is much more complicated

"Smart" watches Apple can now be animatedly discussed, but they face serious difficulties, both at the micro level and at the macro level.

The Apple Watch price formation scheme is at least unconvincing. There is little reason for any person, except for the furious, very rich Apple fan, to buy an expensive watch Apple Watch. As for the most expensive version of the Apple Watch Edition, Apple seems to be trying to invade the luxury watch market segment.

But the appeal to consumers of luxury watches is much more complicated than simply creating a golden version of something and demanding for it five times more.

The main reason that people buy expensive watches is not at all that this watch has a special functionality, and by and large it has little to do with the ability to show time. For collectors of luxury watches, design, craftsmanship, history and brand identity, as well as durability, are important.

The last - longevity - is key, because it is the main component of the value-based competitive offer, which Apple Watch obviously lacks, and this is the most vulnerable place for Apple Watch.

Mechanical watches for $ 10 000 with proper care will work and in 50 years as well as they worked on the day of their purchase. "Smart" watches, for example, Apple Watch, with their integrated design and non-replaceable components, will become obsolete in a couple of years.

Even if the battery has not run out of hours allotted to him the number of charge cycles, the other devices used by the owner of hours, will be much greater than the built in this clock a processor, screen, and their basic functions. This may be acceptable when it comes to watches worth $ 250, but it is absolutely ridiculous when talking about the clock for $ 17,000.

If someone can convince luxury watch buyers to become owners of "smart" luxury watches, they are the manufacturers of watches.

We have watched the traditional hours of responding to the trend associated with "smart" watches, and it is possible that some of these innovative attempts can help them to maintain and even expand the historically established demographics of users.

For example, Frederique Constant and Alpina are already producing what they call the "smart" Horological Smartwatch, which combines a traditional Swiss quartz movement with an analog dial with an integrated tracker, a user tracking device that synchronizes with the smartphone. This approach gives the owner of the watch the opportunity to receive metric data within the framework of the "Measure yourself" movement, related to activity tracking, sleep monitoring and adaptive sports instruction.

What sets them apart from Apple Watch and other purely digital "smart" watches? They do not require charging, the phone is a special brand, and they do not have to be thrown away or change the entire device when the technology changes.

This modular approach allows them to replace the device if they really need it, and the battery life, calculated for 2 years, is more attractive than the device that needs to be charged every 18 hours.

However, you can not check your email or respond to a text message using an analog dial, but these hours are attractive for luxury watch buyers who want to receive information about their activity and do not carry a second device for this purpose.

Other luxury brands also launch smart or connectable watches.

The main example in March at Baselworld, one of the largest trade trade shows, was the recent partnership between Tag Heuer and Google and Intel to develop smart watches. This was widely announced by an outstanding luxury brand, and although the watches were not shown at the exhibition, and we also know little about how they might look or how much it cost, but it was one of the most discussed news on the show.

This work of Tag Heuer was also a clear warning to Apple, as the partnership with Google means, probably, release only for Android.

Breitling, a luxury watch brand, mainly producing watches for pilots, demonstrated on Baselworld a prototype called B55 Connected, which is a variant of the multi-functional chronograph launched by the company last year. It combines an analog and digital displays and is connected to a smartphone, but the most important function is still a clock with a connected application designed to store data and make settings, for example, when setting the time.

Apple Watch, on the contrary, is mainly an intermediary module for your iPhone, so there's no need to take it out of your pocket.

Another way to attract the attention of lovers of luxury watches is difficult: the use of some technology "smart hours" in mechanical watches.

Real watch lovers tend to abandon quartz watches in favor of mechanical watches, which either start manually or with self-winding - that is, they are set up due to the kinetic energy generated by the movement of the wearer.

All of the current hybrid analog offerings mentioned here contain quartz watch movements with long-lasting batteries for powering both analog and digital components of the watch.

Any watch manufacturer that can figure out how to update and combine "smart" technology with an automatic clock mechanism, of course, will attract the attention of watch collectors.

Whether we are talking about purely digital smart watches or these hybrid analog watches, the question of durability is preserved.

Manufacturers of watches need to deal with the issue of durability, if they are going to achieve that serious buyers of luxury watches began to consider the issue of "smart" watches that reached the highest levels of price benchmarks. The key to solving the issue of durability is the modular design.

Mobile phones face the same difficulties. The lifespan of telephones with built-in non-replaceable batteries depends on the reduction in battery charging power.

When the battery can no longer keep charging, most people pay money for a new phone. The phones with replaceable batteries and connectors for micro SD cards are a good step in the right direction, but initiatives such as the fully modular phone Project Ara from Google will become completely destructive to the current state of affairs in the field of fully integrated phone designs.

Similarly, the service life of luxury smart watches can not depend on the variability of the lifetime of the non-replaceable battery.

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