The Quartz Astron — and giving the patents away (1969)

What became of a technology that was spread rather than monopolised

The heart of the Quartz Astron decision can be seen in this: putting an outstanding technology into the world even at the cost of undermining one’s own footing, and then spreading rather than fencing it. That a maker at the summit of mechanical watchmaking went over wholly to the electronic, published its patents and thereby invited competitors in, was behaviour that chose remaking the market itself over short-term profit. As the development was actually carried out by Suwa Seikosha — today Seiko Epson — while it was K. Hattori that put the product before the world, the achievement emerged from several parts of the group competing with one another. To the question of how far a company that leads on technology should open that technology, the Seiko of the day answered on the side of diffusion.

Yet choosing to spread the standard was also to place oneself in the position of a mass producer of cheap, accurate watches. The success of a quartz that swept the world eventually produced a weakness in the high-price segment, where choices are made on feel and brand, and led half a century later to the independence of Grand Seiko. Opening a technology to widen a market and holding high value within that market do not necessarily point in the same direction. Taking the world standard by diffusion rather than monopoly became the starting point of a tension between volume and value that Seiko has faced repeatedly ever since.