A smart watch is a different thing from a quartz wrist watch but it would be foolish to act like the decline of the latter has nothing to do with the former.

I feel like I stopped seeing quartz wrist watches before smart watches were a thing, because smartphones were always available to tell time. At least from my cohort.

Smartwatches (namely Apple Watch) then became a thing because it provided more than time, such as vibrating alerts, fitness tracking, etc.

Not only that, but the high end of the old-school watch industry has never been healthier than it is now. ( https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/en/luxury-watches-for-men-... )

The conventional wisdom that smartwatches are killing traditional watches is just like the conventional wisdom that Starbucks and other corporate brands push out local coffeehouses: dead wrong. Instead, the new players validate the market and provide an anchor point for luxury goods.

There's a reason I said "quartz watches" and the mid-range absolutely did get messed up by smart watches, so the only thing "dead wrong" is your reading of my post.

Mea culpa, looks like you win the Internet.

Lots of younger people never had a watch in the first place, sure, but smart watches appealed to people who would have otherwise bought from, say, Fossil.

But Twitter/HN/etc. are all discovery mechanisms. The fact is that I can think that a lot of interesting content is going to cross my screen sooner or later without my actively prospecting for it--and I'm mostly not wrong.