The smartwatch is a sign of the times It sounded like hubris last week when Nick Hayek, chief executive of Swatch, dismissed out of hand the threat from a potential Apple "smartwatch." Hadn't he heard what happens to companies involved in areas of personal technology that come under attack from the creative geniuses of Cupertino, California? Summoning up images of unwieldy internet watches dating back to Microsoft's Spot watch of nearly a decade ago, Mr Hayek questioned whether "an interactive terminal on your wrist" would ever catch on. "Personally, I don't believe this is the next revolution," he was quoted as saying. In one sense, the Swatch boss is right not to be worried - but in another, it would be a mistake to view the coming revolution in wearable technology through the lens of old product categories. What people choose to strap to their wrists has much to do not just with ease of use, but also fashion and self-image. Swiss makers, who account for nearly half of the $50bn in global watch sales, know full well that their customers are not paying an average of about $825 just because they want to know the time. Apple, which has been widely reported to be considering an iWatch, might be the one tech company with the aesthetic credentials and the brand to put itself up against this competition. But even Apple would struggle in a market that was primarily driven by style and fashion. Companies such as Fossil have made an art of frequent releases and striking design. With its preference for annual release cycles and one-size-fits-all products, this is not a game Apple is well-suited to play. Other parts of the watch market, estimated to produce overall sales of $50bn-$60bn a year, are the preserve of high-end jewellers. That would seem to suggest that only a relatively small segment - a kind of utilitarian ghetto for those who value function as much as form - is open to the makers of smartwatches, of whom a surprising number have been springing up. A third of the $20bn global sales of sub-$500 watches probably falls into this category, says David Wu, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group in New York. It is a part of the market occupied by companies such as Casio and Seiko, which might find themselves in the most direct line of fire. What people choose to strap to their wrists has much to do not just with ease of use, but also fashion and self-image Yet to view a new smartwatch market in this light would be to miss the larger point of a coming wave of wearable technology. An Apple watch would have as much to do with telling the time as Google's forthcoming eyeglasses have to do with correcting your vision - which is to say, not very much at all. These categories are about to be redefined. Intelligent watches, glasses and anything else that can easily fit on the body are best seen as extensions of the smartphone, peripherals that would draw on the handset's key attributes: its connectivity, processing power and storage capacity. When identity and payment information is stored in a phone, why bother reaching for the handset when you can engage with payment terminals and turnstiles with a wave of the wrist? Wristbands can also become intelligent devices in their own right, as companies such as Nike and Jawbone have shown: collecting data about the world around them and their users, to be fed back to and processed by the smartphone. The wrist is not the only underused piece of corporeal real estate that is likely to be fought over. But while smart glasses also hold promise, their basic attribute - giving users a way to capture images and overlay digital information on to their view of the "real" world - raise fundamental privacy and usability issues that may make them slow to catch on. That makes Swatch's own corporate slogan - "Occupy your wrist!" - sound like a suitable rallying cry for the first wave of wearable technology, and a likely venue for the next hardware showdown between Apple and Google. Seen from this perspective, the existing watch business gives no clue as to the potential size and profitability that a new wrist-born technology industry might achieve. Bring enough convenience, and who can say how many bare wrists would become adorned? Swatch was born 30 years ago this month, as the Swiss watch industry reeled from low-price competition from Japan that followed the introduction of quartz technology. The strong brand-management and fashion skills it now exhibits make Mr Hayek's self-confidence in the face of a potential attack from Apple understandable. But he should not take it for granted that the first thing people will reach to strap on each morning will be a pretty but dumb timepiece. Richard Waters is the Financial Times" West Coast managing editor