![]() "We saw demand for digital watches settle down in the '80s and Casio went back to its original thinking when it first entered the watch market that is, ‘a watch is not a mere tool to tell the time.' We started talking about a multifunction, ‘time display plus other things, such as telephone number, memory and music alarm' strategy."Īnd it just so happened that the world was in the grips of a new sort of entertainment. "In the early days, Casio's watch business strategy was mainly about pricing that was made possible by mass production, as there was growing demand for digital watches in the '70s," says Yuichi Masuda, senior executive managing officer and Casio board member. While it saw early success through the design, the brothers were also trying to figure out how to set Casio's devices apart from the rest. Its initial creation was one of the first watches with a liquid crystal display, and the company marketed it as a leap forward in technology. In 1974, Casio entered the watch market with the idea that watches shouldn't be just timepieces. It was the success of that calculator that turned Casio into a company that focused not just on producing electronics, but on setting itself apart from the competition through innovative design, specifically by working to make things more compact. The brothers decided to work on creating a smaller electronic calculator, and in 1957 they succeeded and released the world's first compact office calculator. In 1954, they designed Japan's first, though it was outdated compared to calculators found in other parts of the world. Looking for a follow-up success, Kashio and his brothers started working on an all-electronic calculator. The yubiwa pipe slipped onto a smoker's finger and held a cigarette, helping a smoker extract every bit of tobacco. Kashio founds Casioįounded in 1946 by Tadao Kashio, Casio didn't start out as an electronics company, but as the manufacturer of a plastic ring for smokers. The first innovators of that often overlooked branch of portable gaming, the game watch, included a mix of little-known, tiny electronics and watch manufacturers from Germany, Russia and Hong Kong, but it was mostly influenced in the early years by Casio and then a duo of American manufacturers: General Consumer Electronics and Nelsonic.Īnd it's possible that the rise of gaming on watches may have never happened had it not been for the success of a strange little low-tech smoking gadget created in 1946 for a supply-constrained postwar Japan. It was from the calculator that Mattel built its first portable gaming machines, Nintendo was inspired to make the Game & Watch and Casio created its popular line of, at first, game calculators, but then game watches. The nearly 40-year history of watch gaming shares a common root with all portable gaming: the calculator. Gaming for many smartwatches isn't just a fun aside it is the fuel that may finally help this technology break into the mainstream. ![]() ![]() And even today, it is gaming that is empowering a new generation of developers to push the boundaries of what a smartwatch can do. It was gaming that inspired Casio to try to create a new sort of technophile lifestyle. It was gaming that helped turn calculators into handheld toys. Throughout that somewhat muddled five-decade period, gaming has pushed the technology forward. The history of smartwatches, computerized watches that deliver more than the time, dates back to the '70s, and gaming on those watches has just as long a history. While the Apple Watch may be one of the most advanced takes on that famous idea, it's far from the first smartwatch to deliver on a comic book future.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |