Watchmakers waking up to Wireless? Seiko, Citizen releasing SMS watches

I wonder if they read my interview? As Alan blogged a few months ago, Wireless Asia interviewed me at length around user interfaces for their April 27 issue. Alan's blog is here if you want to read it fully: Usability, it ain't easy. One of the areas I discussed in the original story was the use of the mobile phone as a clock, and I did specifically point at watch-makers to notice this space:

"The other side of this, Ahonen adds, is to observe what people are using their handsets for that they used to do on other devices. 'For example, many adults rely on phones as a watch,' he says. 'If I were a wristwatch manufacturer, I'd recognize that that phone digital interface is a rich environment...'"

Today I learned of two developments in wristwatchmaker to mobile phone convergence, from Japan. Citizen and Seiko are both experimenting in this space. Seiko announced on Friday 9 June that it will release a phone to receive SMS text messages and to vibrate to arriving phone calls etc. The watch will be linked to the phone via bluetooth. The story was blogged by Mobile Mentalism and reported then at Wireless Watch at this link: Talk to the Hand With Seiko

Not to be outdone, their Japanese rival, Citizen has today 13 June announced their reaction. Citizen is ready to release its first run of 5000 phones with this type of bluetooth functionality. This story I've only seen reported so far in the Finnish IT Viikko periodical (thank you Jouko Ahvenainen of Xtract for bringing this to my attention!), but am sure it will be covered shortly in all kinds of media. So I'm sorry this link is to a Finnish language story "Kellonvalmistajien vastaisku matkapuhelimille: tekstiviestivalmius" or in English: "The counterstrike by watchmakers to mobile phones: text messaging ability"

Fascinating development. When will we see the next episode in the clock-phone saga, entitled "Revenge of the phone makers?" Stay tuned...