Whatever their merits as engineering marvels, expensive watches are Veblen goods that are worn to display wealth. Similar mechanisms can be put into pocket watches, but that's a much smaller market. Expensive watches have the appeal they do because they fall on the same continuum as everyone else's watch. Change the middle of the watch market and the current high end will look as absurd as a Vertu brick phone.

I think you're missing the fact that the mechanical watch industry is already post-apocalypse (i.e., the Quartz Crisis that started in the 70s).

The current mechanical watch industry does not exist for anything other than emotional reasons and won't see that much of an impact from another $400 electronic watch.

As a collector myself I think it's an interesting development for the industry and I'm sure I'll buy some version of the Apple Watch. I doubt it will replace one of my mechanicals as a daily wear.

I want to live in a world where watchmakers (and other artists) are free to make any awesome and expensive thing that they can imagine. Man does not live by bread alone.

It's not enough to just live. You have to have something to live for. Let it be mechanical watches.

For things that can be digitally distributed at virtually no cost, or can be bulk produced at low cost (books, music, board games, etc.) I am fully supportive. For things that have a high economic opportunity cost, such as extremely complex watches, luxury cars, things of that nature, I have a very low tolerance because the cost is human life. As a species we have not yet reached a point where every human has the necessities of life. Once everyone has access to food, water, shelter, and internet (education), then I am all for exploring the limits of our potential in every regard.

Mechanical watches are moving art and are rarely purchased out of need. With the advent of perpetual automatics, they approach the ideal of mechanical perfection - a miniature machine which can accurately track time (and many other features) in extreme environments without the need of a power source. As such, they continue to appeal to many different people - with higher end, more complicated designs continuing to come about at higher prices. I'm a software developer and I love my automatics for both their technical merits as well as their aesthetic beauty. To each his own

To me the moral level of consumption is as close to the minimum required to survive and make an optimal economic contribution to society. Everyone needs happiness and entertainment in their lives. The struggle is avoiding excess.

I agree that most of what people spend their money on is the pursuit of happiness and entertainment. My view is that the path to true happiness does not lie in material goods or personal experiences. Rather, helping others in their struggles and seeing their lives improve leads to fulfillment.

As an aside, I think it's your money, and if you want to spend more than I would spend on a server (which is to say, way more than I'd consider spending on a car) on a fancy watch, well, I'm going to make fun of you a little bit, but ultimately, it's your money, and your judgement. But, if fancy watches are primarily signaling, which I believe to be the case, it seems to me that you could figure out how to get the same signaling value out of proving that you gave a certain amount to certain stylish charities.

That's what may change if these new smart watches find their killer app. No one really needed a calculator, heart beat monitor, or other gimmick on his wrist, so digital watches never pulled away on features. That might change now.

Would I rather wear an intricate piece of jewelry or see why my phone vibrated without reaching into my pocket? It starts to be a different calculation.

I only recently got interested in mechanical watches. It's fun to have a mechanical marvel on my wrist for those times when I don't want to reach into my pocket to tell the time using an electronic marvel.

I'm not sure if I'd ever get a smart watch. Perhaps. I actually feel kind of attached to my automatic. If I stop wearing it for more than two days it will stop running. That just seems cruel to the little guy.

Compact cameras are not doing too good, because you can shoot pictures with your phone. DSLR and mirrorless though, are doing swell, with even better projections.

In the same way, I think low end watches (mechanical+smart) will suffer a big hit, but high end watches ($1k+ will not see any difference at all). It's just different market segments. You don't see Martinelli worried about Ikea opening a factory every eayr. They just sell to different people.

I've tried to make that point to people who claim that Apple has ever shrinking market share in the smartphone market. It might seem so to a person who has no idea about marketing, but in reality, Apple's share in the high end segment of the market is increasing.

Watch purists may go the way of vinyl purists, slowly dying out as the competing technology offers more and more convenience.

Well, I don't think people buying 30,000 euros watches are such a big market that Apple should worry about missing them.

That includes former French President Sarkozy (he wears the same Patek Philippe watch), not really the "man with an okay job who lives in a nice apartment in some metropolitan town".

A $50 watch keeps time just about as good as a $10K watch.

And you might even get to keep the former when you're being held up on the way to your Ferrari.

I don't know if I have a use case for the apple watch, I might buy one to try out, see if it works, but I will say -if nothing else, its uniformly a pretty object d'art.

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http://www.cnbc.com/id/101619289

Fairly incredible, expensive watches for rent.

What does this phrase mean? Search engines are giving me nothing.

Go an tell that to someone wearing a diamond ring. That doesn't tell the time either.

Of course that would remove any remaining doubt that the purpose of a $60,000 watch is to signal wealth rather than tell time.

Alternatively, maybe we'll see mechanical watches with a smart watch "complication". At the very least I'm sure we'll see partnerships between (some) high end mechanical watchmakers and smartwatch platforms.

After all, I have expensive leather shoes and trainers. Other than the fact they both go on my feet there is little similarity but I can and do own, use and like both.

That's a 50.000 USD watch?

Aside: I was totally surprised by how similar the  watch looks to the original iPhone.