Smartwatches are at their infancy, but 2015 could be an explosive year once Apple jumps on the bandwagon and more Android Wear smartwatches become available. One of the coolest things about smartwatches is their ability to change watch faces. You could literally have a different watch face for each day of the year. Very cool, but luxury watch makers don’t think so.
You may have noticed that there are already thousands of watch faces available thanks to apps in the Play Store like Facer. Many of those faces are replicas of actual luxury watches, giving you the feeling of owning one without dropping thousands of dollars on one. But now companies like Rolex are trying to stop these replica faces from being available.
According to TorrentFreak, IWC, Panerai, Omega, Fossil, Armani, Michael Kors, Tissot, Certina, Swatch, Flik Flak and Mondaine are sending cease and desist notices to any site or individual who offers such replicas.
One of the most popular sites, FaceRepo, has confirmed that they have received takedown notices and will be honoring them. The operator of FaceRepo said, “Although some of the replica faces we’ve received take downs for are very cool looking and represent significant artistic talent on the part of the designer, we believe that owners of copyrights or trademarks have the right to defend their brand.” I have already noticed that many faces are no longer available. If you search for Rolex on FaceRepo, you won’t find much.
I do agree that watch makers do have a right to their content, but at the same time, I hardly think they are losing sales over it. We are entering the smartwatch era, and consumers will not want to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a watch that does nothing, but tell the time. They are going to have to rethink their strategy. They will have to offer luxury smartwatches, but at the same time, they won’t be able to charge the prices they are getting for the dumb watches since the technology won’t have the same lasting effect as those dumb watches. Basically, you could go out and spend $5,000 on a Rolex and keep it for 20 plus years. You won’t want to do that with smartwatches since the technology is so rapid.
It will be interesting to see how all of this develops over the next year.
source: TorrentFreak
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