Time may be money. But keeping track of time is cheap. Today you can buy a decent watch that keeps perfect time for less than $10. And that is why manufacturers are turning watches into high-tech fashion accessories that can make phone calls, scan the Internet, even change the channels on your television set–add-ons that fetch more money.
Few companies do a better job of fusing wristwatches with hands-free conveniences than Casio Inc. The company’s Wrist Remote ($117) can control your television from as far as 16 feet away. It has buttons for power, volume, TV/VCR, and to change channels.
Another Casio watch allows users to take their blood pressure and download the information to a computer.
The Wrist Camera ($199) takes up to 100 black-and-white digital images that can be transferred to a wrist camera or to a computer via infrared hookup. A new model that takes color photos, due to hit stores in September, will cost $249.
Designed for mountain climbers and other adventurers Casio’s GPS Pathfinder Satellite Navi watch ($499), can pinpoint your exact altitude, latitude, longitude and speed with the help of as many as a dozen orbiting satellites.
Other watchmakers also are shrinking electronics.
Swatch, a Swiss company, already makes a Swatch Access watch that can communicate wirelessly with other devices. Timex’s Datalink watch can scan phone numbers and appointments from a computer screen.
Seiko has developed a new line of watches that never need batteries. Instead the watches are powered by electricity generated by the wearer’s movements.
The Timex Internet Messenger watch ($99), now in stores, allows wearers to retrieve e-mail, headlines, weather reports and other Internet information. The watch was developed with Motorola and SkyTel. Monthly rate plans vary from $4.99 to $9.99.
Korea’s Samsung plans to market a device that combines a watch and a cell phone–with voice-activated dialing–in the United States by year’s end. The watch already is available in Korea. But with a price tag at close to $1,000, this “watch phone” won’t be for everyone.
