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November 04, 2006
Time Is Money: RFID Watches
In the mid-1980s, the colorful, funky Swiss-made Swatch watches were all the rage. I was young and outlandish and wore up to 5 of them on each arm, and gave away many more as gfits. Now Austria has the funky, colorful LAKS watches [Contactless News] which, despite their normal watch size, incorporate NFC (Near Field Communications) technology for contactless payment. LAKS stands for the initials of the watchmaker, Lucas Alexander Karl Scheybal. In addition to this new line, he has watches that have flash drives and play MP3s. Some incorporate employee access IDs or accept SIM cards and have a USB port. [Note: Swatch has an RFID-enabled watch as well.]
According to the Contactless News article, contactless-enabled watches have been in use for lift tickets at ski resorts for years. But the LAKS watches have additional features which allow it to be used for a variety of functions including transit, access, employee ID, etc. And it's popular, of all places, in Shanghai, China. (A recently-announced Chinese project resulted in an order for 125 million contactless, throwaway train tickets.)
LAKS has other watches, some of which were used at the FIFA World Cup (soccer) this year - and event that was massively RFID-enabled. This is a nice, handy way of combining a lot of RF-related functionality into a small, useful form factor - one that's already familiar and acceptable to consumers. Personally, I think we're going to see a lot more radio frequency tech incorporated into watches and wristband-type gadgets and gizmos. That, or something like the Korean MP3 player that also pays for train tickets.
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