In the Age of the Smartwatch, Why Do Mechanical Watches Keep Selling?

Last time, we traced the mystery of the mechanical watch’s revival. The mechanical watch, defeated by quartz on accuracy, drew people’s wrists and hearts back to it once more by donning asset value, status, and story—such was that tale of revival.

Yet right there, near the wrist, an entirely new kind of watch appears. A small screen that does not merely display the time, but measures the heartbeat, receives messages, and even handles payments. The smartwatch. Among them, the arrival of the Apple Watch shook, once more from its very roots, the question of what a wristwatch even is. From tower clocks to Swiss cottage industry, marine chronometers, the birth of the wristwatch, the Big Three and Rolex, the Quartz Shock, the Swatch’s counterattack, and the mechanical renaissance—we who have made this long journey survey, in this final chapter, where the watch now stands. Without rushing to an answer, let us gaze once more, quietly, at the relationship between watches and people.

A Computer Comes to the Wrist

In September 2014, Apple unveiled the Apple Watch. It went on sale the following year, 2015, with sales reportedly beginning in Japan that April. Besides the standard and sport models, there was also an expensive model made with gold, so the prices spanned a wide range.

What made the smartwatch a shock to the history of the watch is that it demoted the display of time to ‘one function among many.’ From tower clocks through mechanical and quartz, the watch had always been ‘a tool for knowing the time.’ But for the smartwatch, the time is information that is automatically corrected in sync with the smartphone—so taken for granted that one does not even notice it. What stepped to the front instead were functions such as health records, notifications, and payments. In terms of accuracy, the smartwatch matter-of-factly possesses a precision that renders not just the mechanical watch but even quartz a thing of the past. It seemed the lead role of the wristwatch had changed hands once again.

Even after yielding the throne of accuracy to the smartwatch, the mechanical watch did not vanish. On the contrary, something strange began to happen.

And Yet, Mechanical Watches Sold

Even as the smartwatch spread, luxury mechanical watches kept selling. By accounts that have been reported, the total value of Swiss watch exports is said to have reached a record high in recent years, and high-priced watches in particular are reported to have strongly driven the growth. A clear picture of premiumization emerged: high-value watches, a mere fraction by unit count, accounted for a large share of the monetary total.

Why, in an age when the most accurate and multifunctional watch is within reach, do people deliberately choose mechanical? What we have seen in the previous chapters comes together here as one. The mechanical watch is now chosen not as a tool for knowing the time, but as a crystallization of craftsmanship, as something to be handed down across generations, as a presence that tells of oneself. While the smartwatch is replaced every few years, the mechanical watch keeps running for decades with care and is at times passed from parent to child. On an axis apart from convenience, people kept finding value in the mechanical.

The smartwatch and the mechanical watch, though both ‘watches worn on the wrist,’ were selling something altogether different. One sold the convenience of tomorrow; the other, a story that transcends time. The very fact that the two coexist in the market speaks to the depth of what a watch is.

Overheating, and the Meaning of the Watch

That the mechanical watch kept being chosen was attended by shadow as well as light.

By accounts that have been reported, some popular models became hard to obtain at authorized dealers, and on the secondhand market there was a period when they traded at prices far above list. At one time, it is said, it was not unusual for a popular sports model to be bought and sold at more than double its list price, and it was pointed out that movements aimed at short-term appreciation, rather than value as a watch, stood out. Afterward, against the backdrop of shifts in the global financial environment and the like, it is also reported that excessive premium prices entered a phase of correction. Those who want one cannot buy it, while buyers aiming at resale move the market—this overheating was, for those who love watches, a phenomenon that could not be called wholly welcome.

And so we return to the first question. Why do people pay a fortune for an outdated machine? Even now, having traced ten chapters, we cannot offer a single answer to that question. Because it is an asset, because it is status, because it is beautiful, because we wish to hand it down—there are several reasons, and as many different stories as there are people. Yet perhaps this much can be said. The watch is one of the few tools that turns invisible time into a form the hand can touch. From the bell that told the town the hour atop the tower, to the machine that keeps marking time upon the wrist, people have always tried, somehow, to keep the passing of time within reach. The fortune paid for a mechanical watch may, perhaps, be the very size of that wish.

For accuracy, the smartphone is enough. And yet, when we are drawn to a small machine in which gears pulse—what lies there is, I believe, a quiet reverence for time, that which flows equally for all and can never be regained. The story of the keepers of time still continues upon the wrist. The watch on your arm, too, may someday become someone’s story.

Thank you for keeping me company on this long journey. If this tale, which began with the tower clock, has made the one watch in your hand look just a little different, then I am glad.

【Keepers of Time: A World History of Luxury Watches — End】