This was news to me. Timex and Speedpass have teamed up to sell a variety of Speedpass-enabled timex watches.
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Swatch has had RFID-enabled watches for several years, but there are few places you can use it.
Posted by simsong at September 8, 2003 11:54 PMThe SpeedPass watch has been around for a while. I first saw it on their site in February. Nokia also was getting into embedding TI's chips into their phone covers, but I can't find any hint of that recently.
As for the Swatch Access line of watches, they are mostly seen in Europe as Ski slope lift tickets. Over 500 resorts use the Skidata (the European equivalent to SpeedPass) system. It is also used at fairs and events. It just never really broke into the US market, although there are a half dozen or so resorts in the US using the Skidata system. One reason it is so much more popular in Europe is an availability of lift tickets purchased by the trip rather than by the day. I'm told people will leave work early and to catch a single run before heading home.
An interesting side-note from a few years back: Swatch was finding that less than half of the Access watches they sold were ever being activated. This was somewhat frustrating to them because of the nature of their financial arrangements with Skidata. I note that the Access series is no longer advertised on their Web site.
Posted by: Henry Holtzman at September 9, 2003 09:46 AM