Luxury watchmakers should embrace smartwatches →

TorrentFreak:

While it’s been fun and games for a while, makers of some of the world’s most expensive and well known watches are now targeting sites offering ‘pirate’ smartwatch faces in order to have digital likenesses of their products removed from the market.

TorrentFreak has learned that IWC, Panerai, Omega, Fossil, Armani, Michael Kors, Tissot, Certina, Swatch, Flik Flak and Mondaine are sending cease and desist notices to sites and individuals thought to be offering faces without permission.

I'd love to see the day these luxury watchmakers design official smartwatch faces and sell them online (at a premium). Hell, they could even design limited edition watchfaces and sell a fixed number of them. I'd personally throw down money for an official Panerai face.

If people are willing to spend on trivial things such as stickers for chat apps or epic beasts in World of Warcraft, why not embrace the digital marketplace?