Slashdot Mirror
Fossil CEO: Wearables Smothering Swiss Watch Business
itwbennett writes: I think technology and the whole idea of wearables ... has taken some of the oxygen out of the Swiss business,' Fossil CEO Kosta Kartsotis told analysts on a call to discuss the watch maker's second quarter results. These new competitors, along with other factors like a strong U.S. dollar, contributed to Fossil's quarterly revenue decline, Kartsotis said. Last week, a report from market research firm NPD Group claimed the Apple Watch was partially behind the largest slump in U.S. watch sales since 2008.
Analog watches are jewelry for people who want to make a fashion statement. Digital watches are for people who want a smartphone on their wrist.
Rubbish. Complete fucking rubbish.
Despite the breathless anticipation of marketing wankers, futurists, and prognosticators ... remarkably little will change in the long run, in the short run there will be change.
There will continue to be desktops. Tablets are here to stay. The Apple watch isn't competing with the traditional watch, no matter what anybody tells you, it's a short term blip as a certain kind of consumer buys different things. Not everybody wants a smart watch, and buying a tablet doesn't mean you don't need a PC.
And then things will settle out, people will still buy traditional watches, the niche market for smart watches will continue to be a niche, and the world will have ultimately changed not as much as you think, nobody will have been pushed away, and you'll still be an idiot who thinks the world actually changes with every new piece of technology.
Trends and fads are, in the end, are just that. In the long run, actual watches will still exist ... and the clueless idiots who either haven't been around long enough, or are paid to tell us what they think the future will be, will discover that just because some fool says we'll all be doing something in a few years doesn't bloody well make it true. Because it never has.
So you'll excuse me if I think your breathless belief that the world has fundamentally changed due to the existence of an Apple watch is the breathless gibberish of someone who hasn't been around technology long enough to know the difference between long term and shot term trends.
Talk to us in 2, 5, 10, or 25 years, and we might take any of this seriously. Until then, this is pink sweat-pants which say "Baby Phat" on the ass -- a mere fucking blip. A trend in style, not a fundamental shift in society.
The Apple watch, or any smart watch, has yet to prove anything other than, for the time being, hipsters are interested in it. Thankfully, long term trends are seldom defined by hipsters, as much as they like to think otherwise.
And then the rest of the world will carry on with normal life.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sorry I don't buy it. I think the fact that everyone carries cellphones and every cellphone displays the time on the face is what is behind his watch slump. I haven't worn a watch in years and it has nothing to do with apple's product.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
This story is amusing because a company named 'Fossil' produces obsolete products.
A "clearly inferior product"?
Any day of the week i will take a finally produced piece of jewlery (what a watch basically is in the 21st century) over a lame fad that at first glance looks like a cheap piece of garbage on my wrist and does nothing usefull that my cell doesnt do better.
The first time i saw an Apple watch on someone's wrist i honestly thought they were wearing an ironic throwback time piece. Then i realized they were wearing an expensive, highly redundant, cheap looking piece of trash.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
What's wrong with the calculator watch? You're on slashdot, most folks here wore one for years... or at least I hope they're still around here somewhere.
The last time I thought calculator watches were cool, I was a tween getting beat up for being the kind of person who thought calculator watches were cool.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"