Easy for us mechanical watch collectors to brush them off, but the Smart Watch trend is building. Wondering what thoughts are out there from watch collectors and whether anybody is trying these out? There's the Pebble, the MetaWatch, the Samsung Gear, Sony Smart Watch, I'm Watch from Italy and many others.

A flurry of Smart Watch announcements are coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show this week.

Pebble:
http://techland.time.com/2014/01/06/with-its-new-steel-smartwatch-pebble-gets-classy/

MetaWatch:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/6/5277128/metawatch-meta-premium-smartwatch-brand

Samsung Gear:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/samsung-galaxy-gear-2-release-teased-by-manufacturer-on-twitter

So far I haven't been too impressed by the forms, functions or pricing, but I think an Apple iWatch might change that if one bows in 2014 as expected. The potential to completely change a watch's functionality with a simple software update is pretty amazing to me. I think this is a tremendous opportunity for Apple to do what it did in the music player and mobile phone businesses. It wasn't even close to being the first entry in those fields, but went on to dominate with iPods and iPhones. The internet is full of iWatch concepts based on information cobbled together from Apple patent applications and general rumors:

http://www.google.com/search?q=iwatch+concept&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=jyLMUuKeBJTfoASo9ICQBA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoATgK&biw=1406&bih=1110

Luxury watch brands are already developing luxury Smart Watches. What do you think of this trend? Will our watch world be transformed as we know it?

Interested to hear your vision of the future. Thanks - Bill Mahoney (Squinky.com)