Lifestyle - Will mobile slay wristwatches

In the age of the cell phone, is time running out for the wristwatch?
Charlie Wollman thinks so. The 16-year-old student from New Jersey doesn’t own a watch. To tell time, he pulls out his wireless phone or glances at public clocks. A watch, he says, is “an extra piece of equipment with no necessary function.”
“A phone has more accurate time, automatically switches time zones and is always with you,” said Wollman, who edits the TeenTechBlog website. He said he might wear a watch someday to make an impression, but as this generation grows up and goes to work, “the watch may increasingly lose meaning.” With more teens and young adults sharing that opinion, the watch industry is at a crossroad.
“It’s true that we’re seeing a decline in the number of watches sold to younger people,” said Louis Galie, senior vice-president for technology at Timex Corp, the top US watch maker. He said fewer young people wear watches today than five years ago. Watch buying also is down over all. In 2007, 30% of adults said they bought a watch within the last year, compared to 35% in 2004, according to Experian Consumer Research. The biggest sales declines are with low-end models, especially sub-$10 watches that represent 15% to 20% of the market’s total value, Galie said. However, the watch industry still does very well at making money, with 2007 its best year ever, Galie said. He said sales are steady for mid-priced watches costing up to $150 and are improving above that, with substantial growth for watches costing $1,000 and up.
Still, a question looms: Will the current generation of young people, who eschew watches, keep their wrists bare as they get older? “The entire jewellery industry, not to mention the economy of Switzerland, is waiting for the answer,” joked Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future, which looks at the social effects of technology. Cole said his focus groups pointed to the surprising trend of many teens not wearing watches and telling time with phones. A follow-up survey with about 500 people last December found more than 60% of people aged, 12 to 24 don’t wear watches, he said. The watch industry has already lost some seasonal gains around graduation time, when watches were once popular gifts, said TimothyDowd, an analyst with the packaged facts product research firm.
“Even if there’s a little bump up for a little while, I have a feeling the industry should be hedging their bets,” he said. “Long term rival devices are going to keep taking dollars away from the watch market.”
But Galie of Timex is optimistic, saying that watches regain popularity when consumers reach their 20s and 30s. He said that pattern has already happened in Europe and Asia and may become clear in the US soon. “There’s something about the watch as an item of jewellery, which brings people back to it, not just to tell time,” Galie said. Cole agreed that the cell phone timekeeping trend is not “a Rolex problem,” saying people don’t spend $5,000 on a watch to keep appointments. Galie said the watch industry is struggling to remake its identity. “Are watches relevant at all any more for their primary function ... telling time? The answer may be no,” he said. Traditional mechanical watches are regaining prominence after decades of dominance by battery-powered models, he said. At the other extreme, high-tech is popular, especially in sports watches that include global positioning technology and other features. A key strategy is to avoid competing head-to-head with cell phones, which have advantages such as bigger screens and keypads, he said.
Future watches may embrace high-speed wireless networks differently, delivering news alerts or collecting and transmitting sports performance data, Galie said.
—NY Times / David Ho