article to read

[Oceanklassik]

How SMART do you want to be?

Montblanc out to conquer the Summit of smartwatches

Inspired by the 1858 Collection, it is a classic design with a modern technological upgrade

Montblanc, the German luxury brand of pens, jewellery and watches, has released its first smartwatch, the Summit.

http://www.montblanc.com/en/collecti...tml?=undefined

Powered by Android Wear 2.0, the Summit is inspired by Montblanc's 1858 Collection analogue timepieces. In fact, you can hardly tell the difference between the Summit and the 1858 version if you place them side by side. The Summit has a classic design given a modern technological upgrade.

The Summit has different versions, one with a silver stainless-steel watch case, a black stainless-steel case, or a silver stainless-steel case with black bezel model, and a more premium titanium model. Each model comes with a charging cradle that sports the iconic Montblanc emblem.

There are also eight different straps, from calfskin leather ($150) to alligator ($375), to complement the four models.

I have reviewed the model with a silver stainless-steel watch case and a red Nato strap (which cost a total of $1,400). The Nato strap ($165) might look like a fabric strap, but it is actually made of rubber. This makes it great for workouts and general rugged use. Each Summit strap comes with quick-release spring bars for easy installation and removal, so you can use a different one each day to suit your mood.

The Summit is an exquisitely crafted timepiece with its "premium-ness" very evident the moment you strap it onto your wrist. Its 46mm-wide stainless-steel circular watch case feels as smooth as silk. A beautifully crafted crown with the Montblanc emblem is sited on its right. Its classic and timeless design means it will not look out of place even when you are attending a state dinner. But its watch case is really quite large and easily takes over your entire wrist. Yet, despite the large watch case, it is rather thin at only 12.5mm thick.

When I wore the Summit, it felt lightweight and really comfortable. Its slight rear bulge, due to the heart-rate monitor, did not cause any discomfort. The watch's 1.39-inch (400 x 400 pixels) Amoled touchscreen circular display has a slightly curved sapphire glass surface. This is the first smartwatch to have a curved glass surface, according to Montblanc. The display looks really sharp, with intricate details evident. Instagram notifications show pictures in their full glory, for instance.

Official Montblanc watch faces take after their analogue cousins and make the watch look like a timepiece more than a smartwatch. Your friends will be fooled into thinking you are wearing an analogue watch. Furthermore, these watch faces have an always-on function. They will show a black-and-white watch face when idle.

However, it is a shame that the crown is not rotatable and serves only as the home button. With the new circular user interface (UI) of Android Wear 2.0, a rotatable crown would have been perfect to navigate the new UI. In addition, there is no built-in GPS. Considering that the Summit has a large case, it would have been easy to include a GPS module. So when you go for outdoor runs or walks, it uses your smartphone's GPS to calculate distance.

Using the Google Fit app on the Summit - paired to my Samsung Galaxy Note 5 - for my usual 5km runs, I found the distance tracked to be only slightly longer - around 200m at most - than my calibrated Apple Watch Nike+. But, for daily steps tracking, the Summit registered up to 11 per cent less than the steps tracked on the Apple Watch Nike+. However, the Summit's heartrate-monitor readings differed only by two to three beats per minute, compared with the Apple Watch Nike+.

The watch has no Near Field Communications (NFC). So, this means you cannot use it for Android Pay, which requires an Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch with NFC to work. The Summit's water resistance is rated at only IP68, meaning you can wash your hands with it but not swim or shower with it.

Battery life is average for a smartwatch. When paired with my Note 5 with notifications turned on, I found that it was left with around 50 per cent battery power by the time I went to bed. You might want to charge it every night.

Tech Specs
Price: $1,340-$1,610
Connectivity: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
Water Resistance: IP68
Weight: 105g (silver stainless-steel model with rubber Nato strap)

Rating
Features: 3/5
Design: 5/5
Performance: 4/5
Battery Life: 3/5
Value for Money: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

(article by Trevor Tan from the Straits Times, July 5, 2017)

[triton]

click here to read on georges kern immediate resignation who was the head of watchmaking, marketing and digital/

[triton]

click here to read why Patek won't rush into China market.

[triton]

click here to find out which rolex that is under $6000 is a punch above their weight.

excerpts -

"if the yellow gold rolex day date is the representative of the rolex luxury model and the stainless steel submariner is the representative of the tool watch, then which model is the rolex of rolex"

[triton]

bespoke singapore watch maker. read it here

"customers can choose dial and hands and inscriptions for their watches"

[Oceanklassik]

ROLEX "kills"!

The Rolex murder of '98

Article lifted from today's Sunday Times, August 13, 2017

Rolex murder article.jpg

Jonaris Badlishah (Jonaris) wanted to give his girlfriend a Rolex. He did not have the money, so he killed to get the watch.

Jonaris came up with the perfect gift for his girlfriend on her 31st birthday - a $7,500 gold and diamond-studded Rolex watch. When he gave it to the Thai prostitute he was in love with, she remarked that it looked old. What she did not realise at the time was that earlier in the day, the watch had been on the wrist of 42-year-old make-up artist Sally Poh Bee Eng, a mother of two grown-up children.

In the early hours of April 20, 1998, Jonaris had repeatedly bashed her head with a hammer for the sole purpose of taking the watch.

OFTEN IN DEBT

Known as Joe to his colleagues, 23-year-old Jonaris was a freelance assistant cameraman and prop assistant. Jonaris' Singaporean mother Elizabeth Seet had divorced his Malaysian father when he was still young. She returned to Singapore when Jonaris was about two years old, and later remarried. The family lived in a Begonia Drive semi-detached house in the expensive Seletar Hills estate. But even then, Jonaris was often in debt and needed to borrow money.

He met Madam Poh during a filming project about two days before the killing, and noticed her wearing a Rolex watch. "It caught my attention," he said. He thought that it would make "a wonderful present" for his girlfriend Saifon Ngammoo. "I knew that I could not afford to buy such an expensive watch for her. The next thing that came to my mind was to rob Sally Poh of her watch."

THE KILLING

On April 19, he called her, identified himself as "Nigel" - a name that would later haunt him - and told her that her services were needed for a photoshoot. He promised her $1,000, more than double her usual fee. He asked her to be at the Marina South bus stop, opposite the Superbowl Golf and Country Club, at about 6.30am.

She drove her car there the next morning and waited near the bus stop as asked. Jonaris approached her and told her that "Nigel" and the rest of the crew would be arriving shortly. Madam Poh parked her car and waited at the bus stop with him.

Jonaris took out a hammer, struck the woman on the head and dragged her to the bushes behind the bus stop, more than 10m away. Madam Poh regained consciousness and tried to stand up. Jonaris then used the hammer to hit her more than 10 times on the back of her head until she blacked out again. He cut the victim's wrist before leaving with her watch.

According to the forensic expert, Professor Chao Tzee Cheng, the left side of her skull had extensive fractures. The longest crack on her head measured about 13cm long. Even if she had received medical help at the scene, doctors would not have been able to revive her, he said.

Later that day, Jonaris bought a bouquet of red roses, a cake and a bottle of whiskey and took them to a brothel in Lorong 18 in Geylang. He and his girlfriend celebrated her birthday with a few other girls there.

He gave Ms Ngammoo the watch. She noticed that it was not new. "I asked him about it but he became angry," she testified during the trial. "I said I was only joking with him and I thanked him."

TWIST OF FATE

It did not take long for police to find a suspect. Madam Poh's husband, Mr Lee Boon Siang, a 47-year-old teacher, had overheard his wife speaking on the telephone the day before the murder. He told police he heard her use a name which sounded like "Lai Joe" - when it should have been Nigel.

In a strange twist of fate, Jonaris had earned himself the nickname of "Liar Joe" among his friends because of his boastful nature. He would tell them he was dating an airline executive who earned $10,000 a month and lived in a condo, when the truth was that his girlfriend earned her keep by entertaining as many as 20 men a day.

He would claim that a used silver Dupont lighter she gave him cost $2,000, when it was less than $700. He also borrowed money and never returned it when he promised he would. Even during his trial, Jonaris kept up appearances, wearing a black tailored jacket, gold cufflinks and shiny black shoes. On April 23, police arrested "Liar Joe" at his home.

MENTAL DISORDER

His defence was that he was mentally ill at the time he killed Madam Poh. He claimed he was high on cannabis, suffering from depression and obsessed with the Rolex watch. He also claimed that he was abused as a child by his mother and stepfather and that growing up was "a living hell".

Jonaris told the court the couple used to force him to kneel for hours and clipped clothes pegs on his ears, fingers, lips and tongue. He would be made to chew raw chilli and stand in front of a mirror for hours. He got so used to being caned that "my mother switched to using a belt".

Madam Seet had two boys with her ex-husband and two children with Mr Robert Seah. Jonaris said the couple treated their own children well, but that he and his younger brother were "like outsiders". He also claimed that his mother told him to say he was her nephew and not her son in public.

Madam Seet admitted on the stand that she used to punish her son severely from when he was about three years old until he was 14 or 15. She claimed that the mother of her second husband did not like her sons from her previous marriage, and "brainwashed" him into telling others that Jonaris and his brother were Madam Seet's nephews. She also claimed that Jonaris had bouts of headaches after he fell into a drain when he was about eight years old.

Judicial Commissioner Amarjeet Singh asked her: "You consider him fit enough to be punished?"

She replied: "Yes, your honour."

Jonaris also claimed that around the time of the killing, his mother was constantly pestering him to return a sum of $2,000 that he had borrowed. That made him even more depressed. Ms Ngammoo, whom he first met in October 1997 when paying for her services, was different from other women, he said. He fell in love with her because she "understood" him. He said he and "Ling" - his pet name for her - not had a troubled past.

The divorcee, who had a three-year-old child in Thailand, had told him about her hard life back home and how she had to resort to prostitution. Even when she loaned him $7,000 to solve his money problems, she did not pressure him into returning it. She even gave him money to pay her pimp so he could be with her. Jonaris claimed he wanted to earn more money so that he could take care of them.

THE WATCH

He said Ms Ngammoo had told him about a Rolex watch which had been given to her by her ex-husband, and which she had had to pawn in 1995 to help a friend. "She missed her watch as it meant a lot to her."

Since then, Jonaris said, thoughts and images of a Rolex watch kept appearing to him. That "stupid" watch even appeared in his dream. He revealed that a few weeks before the killing, he had trailed another woman, intending to take her Rolex. But he did not go through with it as he did not have the courage, he said.

When he saw Madam Poh's watch, he felt that he had to have it. "Even if she had a five-carat diamond ring on her finger or $10,000 in her wallet, I would not touch them. I don't understand why." He said he was confused and could not decide whether to rob Madam Poh that day. "I heard a voice telling me that if I did not do it, I would face the same problem the next day."

It was then that he took out his hammer and swung it at her head. He could not control himself, he said. It was "like watching a movie with ear plugs on" - he could see her mouth moving, as if she were talking, but he heard nothing. As he walked away from the scene after taking her watch, he said he felt a kind of "happiness and relief" that he had never experienced.

"The colour of the water, the sky, the bird, was so new. I felt so free, like a renaissance, like a new beginning. Everything seemed so clean. It looked like a beautiful day."

He went home to sleep. When he woke up later that day, he thought he had had a nightmare, he said. "But when I saw the watch in my drawer, I knew that it was not a dream and that it really happened."

[RoyalOak]

DEATH SENTENCE

On Dec 8, 1998, after a 19-day trial, the judge found Jonaris guilty and sentenced him to hang.

He said: “In my opinion, like Hamlet, the accused was not ‘mad’ but had a ‘method in his madness’ which showed that the killing of the deceased was pre-meditated and his ‘madness’ counterfeit.”

Delivering his 90-minute judgment to a packed courtroom, he said that Jonaris was normal. He was able to work hard, mingle with friends and fall in love with Miss Ngammoo.

“This was not a symptom at all of a depressed man close to the day or on the day of the offence,” he said.

He noted that Jonaris’ financial problems began soon after he met the prostitute in a Geylang brothel late last year.

As a prop assistant, he sometimes earned about $2,000 in a month but he would spend $4,000 a month when he visited his girlfriend four times a week.

While he lived in the house of his mother and step-father, he had boasted that he was rich and lived in a bungalow with a swimming pool. To keep up appearances, Jonaris was desperate for money and this drove him to commit the robbery, said the judge.

He added that when Madam Poh regained consciousness and tried to crawl away, he hit her till part of her skull broke into pieces. To ensure that she would not live to report him to the police, he slashed her wrists with a paper cutter so that she would also bleed to death.

Such “quick action and thinking process”, the judge said, showed that Jonaris was in control of himself at the time.

As he was led out of the courtroom, Madam Poh’s husband shouted: “You deserve it!”

[Oceanklassik]

Tx for helping to complete the article

[E_mor3j]

I feel atm a good model to buy would be the Patrizzi Dial Daytona..

Paul newmans have reached a bubble already i feel. I think every collection should have a rolex day date!

[Oceanklassik]

Today in the Straits Times, Digital

Smart move to place your bets on smartwatches

While the market may not seem to be rosy now, signs are pointing to such devices remaining relevant

Is the smartwatch still relevant? Wait, you don't know what a smartwatch is?

For the uninitiated, a smartwatch is a wristwatch with "smart" functions that alert you when there is an incoming call, a new e-mail message or an upcoming appointment. It usually connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth. Some even have built-in cellular capabilities that allow them to be untethered from a smartphone.

Being a tech geek and a watch lover, I feel the smartwatch is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I bought the first-generation Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch before it was launched here. I also bought the original Apple Watch in Tokyo before it reached our shores.

I like that I can read messages and incoming e-mails on my smartwatch whenever I stop my car at a traffic light. I like my smartwatch telling me to stand up when I have been sitting for too long. I also like it guiding me through a range of breathing exercises and showing me how many steps I have taken a day.

I have even stopped buying new watches because of the smartwatch (OK, I still do - but don't tell my wife). It just feels funny and unempowered to have a "dumb" watch on my wrist. But the smartwatch market is not looking rosy at the moment.

Apart from the Apple Watch, which seems to be doing well, there are a number of worrying signs for the smartwatch market at the moment.

After running into financial issues, smartwatch poster boy Pebble no longer exists. It was bought over by fitness tracker giant Fitbit last year, and no longer sells new Pebble smartwatches. And Fitbit itself has yet to launch its rumoured Blaze smartwatch (at press time).

Google's smartwatch operating system Android Wear 2.0 - announced last May - took nearly a year after its announcement to be on the market. LG, Motorola and Huawei are not expected to launch new smartwatches any time soon. Huawei's current CEO Eric Xu even admitted during an analyst summit in April that he never saw the "need to wear smartwatches".

Such developments prompted many critics to question the relevance of this fledgling device. But I think the smartwatch is still relevant. For one thing, the forecasts for smartwatches remain optimistic. Research firm Canalys predicted in a March report that the smartwatch market will grow 18 per cent this year, compared with last year, with an expected shipment of 28.5 million units. By 2021, more than 50 million smartwatches are expected to be shipped.

Rumoured cellular-enabled smartwatches from Apple, which reportedly will be launched later this year, are also expected to give the market a boost, according to a Canalys report this month. Smartwatches might not be churning up a tsunami that some analysts have predicted, but they are making tiny waves in our digital lives.

A friend recently got herself an Apple Watch Series 2. She is now totally into it - and she's not even a watch person - because it motivates her to go for runs and be more fit. With the Apple Watch Series 2 and Samsung Gear 3 smartwatches, you can also make mobile payments. And with the recent launch of the EZ-Charm Wearable that can be attached to a Gear 3 or Gear Fit2, you can even pay for public transport using your smartwatch.

I feel the main problem with many early smartwatches is that they are made by inexperienced start-ups or tech companies. Thus, you mostly get a gadget that you wear on the wrist, instead of a wristwatch. And people want to wear a wristwatch that feels like one, or at least a pretty one that does not feel like a gadget.

But, in recent months, we saw the launch of new smartwatches from fashion and luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Montblanc and Tag Heuer. With their vast experience in watchmaking, they will be the prime mover of the next generation of smartwatches that consumers will want or even lust for.

If smartwatches are not the future, I doubt that these watchmakers will be jumping on the bandwagon.

- by Trevor Tan

[triton]

millionaire ditches rolex for smart watch

another similar article to Oceanklassik's article found in todays ST

this article titled - this millionaire CEO chooses to wear fitbit over a rolex.

now, will you ditch your rolex for a smart watch like fitbit?

[Oceanklassik]

...speaking of which, watch this short interview - who wears a Citizen watch?

[Oceanklassik]

Straits Times, life - Thursday, Aug 24, 2017

COLOURFUL TIMES

Many luxury watch brands have brought out the paint palette, using colours to be more creative and reel in younger customers

If you do not know already, this year's colour is "greenery". The Pantone Colour Institute has decreed that the zesty yellow-green hue - or, more specifically, Pantone 15-0343 - best represents the mood and attitude of 2017.

As has been the case since 2000, when the institute first declared a colour of the year, players in the design industry, from fashion to architecture, beavered away to inject this hue into what they do. But even before the announcement in December last year, watchmakers have been playing with various shades of Kermit.

They include Swiss luxe jeweler de Grisogono, which gave its Allegra watch lime-green rubber straps; and Hublot, which did a green take with one of its Big Bang Tutti Frutti models. Rolex has a fabulous green Submariner, while Tag Heuer, in a collaboration with footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, rolled out the Formula 1 CR7 in a fetching shade of green too.

In fact, many high-end watch brands have, of late, ditched conservatism and brought out the paint palette.

Trying economic times call for more vibrant strategies and creative approaches, one of which is to marry horological smarts and street cred by taking a chance on colour. Opening the paint box is also one way of reeling in younger buyers.

At the Baselworld watch and jewellery fair this year, many of the headturners came in an assortment of hues, from scarlet to turquoise.

Bulgari flaunted its vibrantly coloured Serpenti collection and launched an app that allows customers to pick their own dial, case and strap. Hublot also introduced a new collection, Spirit of Bog Bang Moonphase, in colours including pink and purple.

If you are thinking of getting some colour on your wrist, here are some options.

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IMG_4712.jpg

[Oceanklassik]

IMG_4711.jpg

[Oceanklassik]

The Business Times - 25 August 2018

Luxury watch market ticks up ahead of time, thanks to Chinese orders

A BIG jump in orders from China has put the global market for luxury timepieces back on its feet sooner than expected, after having languished for more than two years. This should be good news for the Singapore market, which is among the world's 10 biggest, and one of four among the 10 to have posted growth so far this year.

Switzerland is virtually the sole supplier of such timepieces, and the Chinese snap up the bulk of them; not only do the Chinese import the watches, they buy them on their travels to major watch markets such as Singapore.

Sales of Swiss watches went into free fall during the 2008 global recession, but this didn't last long. Strong orders from China and Hong Kong in the following year arrested the dive and pulled Swiss exports up 22.7 per cent year on year. The slump in the market in the last two years was due in large part to China's crackdown on corruption, which shrank Chinese orders.

But it looks like China has come to the rescue of the Swiss once more, as Richemont Group chief financial officer Gary Saage told financial analysts in mid-May: "Mainland China has been really quite strong and has been for nine months." Richemont is one of the two biggest Swiss producers of luxury timepieces; the other is the Swatch Group. Mr Saage's remark came at around the time the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry reported that shipments to the mainland surged 39 per cent in April. This strong double-digit growth continued for the next three months; shipments in July saw a 22.3 per cent jump.

In the first seven months of this year, Swiss watch exports to China rose 21.8 per cent to 850.1 million Swiss francs (S$1.19 billion), said the federation. Swiss watch exports globally have yet to return to their pre-slump level, but they have been growing for three straight months so far. Shipments were up 3.4 per cent in July; in the first seven months of this year, Swiss watch exports expanded 0.7 per cent to 10.31 billion francs.

The expansion in value terms was backed by mechanical watches, which grew 2 per cent; quartz products lost ground (minus 4.5 per cent). Gold watch shipments fell in value but exports of steel timepieces expanded; exports of platinum and bi-metal models also rose.

Watches priced under 200 francs (export price) were the only category to decline, shedding 11.2 per cent in value. Those in the 200-500 franc price range rose 3 per cent; watches priced above 500 francs posted a 1.3 per cent gain.

Among the top 10 markets, Swiss watch exports were still down in the US (minus 4.8 per cent), Italy (minus 9.9 per cent), Germany (minus 3.3 per cent), France (minus 3.7 per cent) and UAE (minus 7.4 per cent). But the Swiss watch federation thinks the worst is over - and sooner than expected. It said: "Although Swiss watch industry exports are not equally dynamic everywhere, their overall trend has stabilized...This stabilization had not been expected before the end of the year."

Swatch chief executive Nick Hayek predicted in March that Swiss watch sales would rise by 5-10 per cent this year. Richemont chairman Johann Rupert, who thinks the root of the problem is over-production, envisages a gradual recovery. Thanks to a favourable base effect, Swiss shipments to Hong Kong (Switzerland's biggest watch market) jumped 16.8 per cent in July and 2.9 per cent between January and July.

Even the UK, which registered an 8.5 per cent fall in shipments in July, grew 12.1 per cent in the first seven months because of an under-value pound. Swiss watch shipments to Singapore rose 3.8 per cent in July, and by 0.9 per cent in the first seven months to 574.5 million francs. Exports to Singapore barely grew in 2015 and tumbled 10.4 per cent in 2016.

Singapore retailers now no longer moan over poor sales, but are remaining cautious. "Prudent growth" is the catch phrase for The Hour Glass this year. Singapore's largest retail watch chain reported that, for the financial year ended March 2017, sales shrank by 2 per cent to S$696.1 million, and after-tax profit fell 7 per cent to S$49.6 million.

Cortina Holdings, the next biggest local watch chain, halted two straight years of decline to announce that sales climbed 6 per cent to S$390.8 million for the financial year ended March 2017. Net profit jumped 47 per cent to S$12.5 million. It put this down to its new and refurbished stores and marketing efforts.

- by Chuang Peck Ming