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CANNES, France - Teenagers often have a lot of time on their hands, just don't expect them to wear a watch.
That was one of the findings promoted by academic Jeffrey Cole during a seminar at the Cannes Lions advertising festival looking at trends emerging in digital media industries.
"An interesting issue we are starting to see, which is terrifying a whole industry, is that teenagers may never wear watches," said Cole, a director at the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California.
The professor, in a presentation sponsored by Microsoft, said the findings came from part of a rolling global study in more than 20 countries.
"We know teens today are not buying watches because they are using their mobile phones to know what time it is," he said.
"The entire jewellery industry is waiting to the answer to the question will teenagers start buying watches when they get older as fashion accessories. No one knows yet. I tend to think they will but I don't have any good evidence for that."
Cole said companies like Rolex were not affected because very few teenagers buy Rolexes, but companies like Timex were Swatch very concerned.
In an interview, Cole said technology was throwing up numerous social changes, adding he recently attended a rock concert where every teenager was waving illuminated cell phones in the air rather than flickering cigarette lighters.
A spokeswoman for Timex said that due to the proliferation of alternative sources of time-keeping such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants and MP3 players consumers did have more choice, adding that mobiles and MP3 players had been embraced by younger consumers.
"However, the wrist remains a logical, practical and optimal location for timekeeping, and if we can also offer the consumer additional functionality, above and beyond telling the time, watches retain their appeal," said she in an email.
Timex was exploring new development opportunities which would offer an "enhanced experience" to the consumer that would give them an incentive to keep watches on teenagers, she added.
"We believe that watches have to move beyond pure time-telling in order to appeal to younger consumers, and we are confident that we are moving in that direction."
A spokeswoman for Swiss-based Swatch, the world's biggest watchmaker, said the company was seeing all segments of its market "doing well" and declined to comment further.
Strong demand for Swatch Group's high-end brands such as Omega and Breguet, particularly in emerging markets like China and Russia, helped the company post a record net profit in 2006.
- REUTERS
