Last year Apple’s Jony Ive was reportedly quoted as saying that Swiss watchmakers were in trouble in the fact of the upcoming launch of the Apple Watch. This sentiment was shared by Swatch’s co-inventor who felt that the Swiss watch industry might have missed the boat on the whole smartwatch market.However in a recent interview with Jony Ive and Marc Newson at the Conde Nast International Luxury Conference, Ive’s comments seem to suggest that luxury watchmakers have nothing to fear from the Apple Watch. Vogue International’s editor Suzy Menkes asked the duo on their thoughts of how the Apple Watch impacted the luxury watch industry.
According to Ive, “It wasn’t because we thought we could design a better watch, [or that we] wanted to compete with the existing watch makers. It was because that we saw that the wrist was a fabulous place for technology. So the motivation was very different from the one that we had when we worked on the iPhone.”
Later when asked about how the Apple Watch’s lifespan compares to that of traditional mechanical watches, some of which are passed from generation to generation like an heirloom, Ive was quoted as saying, “I don’t see how we can compare these wonderful mechanical watches that we own and a product that has such a comprehensive functionality and capability that will grow and change beyond our imagining.”
What do you guys make of Ive’s statements? Do you think that smartwatches will eventually replace traditional watches? Or will there always be a time and place for either device?
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