About a year ago, I wrote about Mondani’s book ‘100 years of Rolex’, which is a must have if you are a (serious) Rolex passionate. Now, especially for the iPhone user, Mondani Editore created an iPhone app (Apple users like to use this shortcut for ‘application’) that contains 182MB of information about Rolex wristwatches. Since Rolex, and especially vintage Rolex, is booming – this might be a well-aimed shot from the creators of this iPhone [killer] app.

For a fraction of the price of the book (which is around 299 Euro), you will buy your own electronic copy of 100 years of Rolex, which contains over 500 high quality pictures, updated prices and enables you to search Rolex models on model, production year, reference and value. This iPhone app costs 9,99 Euro and is available through Apple’s AppStore.

The application has categories on Years, Model, References, Movies and the aforementioned search option. Let me show you a few examples of what this application does, using some screendumps I just made with my iPhone.

First of all, you can flip to the most important years of Rolex’s history, starting in 1908 ofcourse, when Hans Wilsdorf registered Rolex.

However, being a Rolex enthusiast for years and owning several nice publications on the subject, I quickly skipped to the Models section. This Explorer section for example, period and reference numbers show the various models made. Clicking the latest 114270 model shows the following:

A nice close-up photograph of the ref.114270 Rolex Explorer and some additional model information.

Interested in the vintage Rolex GMT-Master ref.1675? Currently quite popular amongst collectors (sold mine too quickly for too little money).. When clicking the blue icon (telling us it has 7 pictures inside), you will see the following:

A nice close-up of the Rolex GMT-Master ref.1675 on a Jubilé bracelet. As you are used from Apple’s iPhone, using your fingers to either zoom-in or zoom-out, also perfectly works with this ‘100 years of Rolex’ app.

The Movies category shows you in which movies you can see a Rolex wristwatch. I think Ed Heliosz started this hype – of listing watches used in movies – in 1998, and it became the sub-hobby of many of us watch nuts (including Jake’s ).

I think Guide Mondani Editore did a very nice job on this 100 years of Rolex app for iPhone. Yet another great iPhone app for many watch enthusiasts, since the Uhren Katalog and Jaeger-LeCoultre iPhone applications. World Watch Report (IC-Agency) did some research on iPhone applications and the world of sheer Luxury, which you can find here.

The 9,99 Euro can make people a bit hesitant to buy this app, but you have my recommendation (for what it’s worth). A true killer app (for Rolex fans)!!

Click here to download ‘100 years of Rolex’!

Apple’s iPhone is hot, luxury wrist watches are hot. So why not combine these two? More and more watch manufacturers are creating iPhone applications for watch freaks that are eager to learn about their favorite brand (like Jaeger-LeCoultre did) or just to showcase their line-up of watches.

World Watch Report (IC-Agency) decided to analyse the market of iPhone applications for luxury brands and asked a number of luxury watches bloggers, journalists and professionals from the luxury watch industry about their opinions and input. Being both an iPhone fan and luxury watch blogger for quite some time now, and an IT professional, I thought it might be a good idea to participate with World Watch Report.

A number of questions were asked by IC-Agency and I took some time to answer them properly. All answers need some timely processing, so my guess is that short answers will work best.

- What should brands take into account before launching an application?

Simplicity and useability. The Jaeger-LeCoultre iPhone application is a great example of a useable application with its catalogue and watch school. The Breitling iPhone application is not. It doesn’t let you play around with the application, explore different models etc. It is too static. Perhaps even more important, what’s the goal of the iPhone application? What do you want to tell the downloaders of such an application? Buy a watch? Explore our brand? Give them a sense of ‘join the club/you are part of our club’?

So, simplicity/useability, clear goal & target audience.

- According to you, what are the best practices in that field? What can brands concretely expect from it?

Like any other development best practice for software or websites: useability is KEY. There are numerous best / leading practices for software development that focus on useability. One of the main things that works best is to appoint a pilot team that is representative for their target audience. This pilot team should be part of the prototyping lifecycle of the application. This will not only phase out bugs/errors, but will also give the designers great feedback on useability, functionality and performance.

In the end, a luxury brand will be able to release/introduce a proper working application that is tried & tested by a representative team for their luxury products.

- What is your futurology? Which evolutions do you see in the near future?

Platform independent applications that will enable users to have the latest information on the brand, connect to other enthusiasts of the brand (social networking) through the application and have brand videos pushed to the iPhone (or whatever hardware platform used) on demand.

You can view IC-Agency’s presentation on iPhone Applications and the Luxury Brands below:

I am very curious about your take on this. Use the comments to share your thoughts with us.

Marc Menant (product manager at Jaeger-LeCoultre) mailed me the latest JLC novelty An iPhone application that enables JLC adepts or prospects to examine their line of watches more thoroughly, where ever you are.

After downloading the 50MB application, I was immediately stunned by it. The graphics are amazing, the included videos are very nice to look at and even better.. you can fiddle around with the watches in the catalogue. The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso can actually be reversed by a simple movement on the touch screen, the chronograph functionality works when tapping the pushers properly etc.

Perhaps the nicest feature is the one that enables you to assemble a part of the watch movement. These watch courses have an introduction video, and afterwards, you can try to assemble the movement yourself. Impressive!

If you have an Apple iPhone, what are you waiting for? Look for ‘jaeger’ in the AppStore and after selecting the application, click ‘Free’ and ‘Download’.

I bought a few German watch magazines in München last week, and in the latest Uhren Magazin there was a full-size page ad about their Uhren Katalog for Apple’s iPhone. Once I got home (I switched off the data mode since it is very expensive to use in foreign countries), I immediately checked out the Uhren Katalog application in the AppStore.

Now, there is a fee version called Uhren Katalog Lite and a full version for 6,99 Euro (as pictured below). I first tried the Lite version ofcourse (hey, I am Dutch) and it is exactly as it should be in my opinion. Fast, quite complete and easy to use. Since I am buying loads of magazines anyway, I quickly downloaded the full version:

Unfortunately, the application is only in German, but very easy to use. I actually don’t think this should be a problem for the non-German speaking (reading) watch fans. Besides that, as an avid watch fan, you should be able to read at least a few words in German

You can either browse through the catalogue on brands (Hersteller), on price (Preis, duh) or you can search for a brand (Suchen). See below for a small part of Audemars Piguet’s watches in the Uhren Katalog. The application offers more watches from AP ofcourse, but not the full catalogue of AP. However, the annual catalogues on paper also only have a selection of watches per brand.

When you select a watch (just tap one), you will get to see a picture of that particular watch, as shown below in the screendump I made after selecting a Porsche Design model. If you tab the “i” on the screen, you will see the specifications/data of the selected wrist watch (see below).

As you can see in the above listed specifications, it contains all the useful information needed. The price just fell off the page when making a screendump, but it is all there

Among the huge number of (mostly useless) iPhone applications I have, this one really rocks. The Uhren Katalog app contains over 1000 watches. It is well worth the 6.99 Euro and I suggest you started downloading it immediately after reading this. IF you have an iPhone that is.

Being an iPhone enthusiast myself (and I am not a gadget freak, I only want electronic stuff that works properly), I gave FratelloWatches a slight update so it works faster for iPhone/iPod Touch users. Thanks to WPTouch, creators of this great add-on software for my blog, this site now loads very fast on iPhones (and iPod Touch models).

Where you had to rescale the website before, as shown below, you now have a quick loading overview of the last articles I posted here on FW.

With the WPTouch add-on, the website now looks like a iPhone app from the AppStore:

You can tap the article you want to read, which gives you some sort of preview. If you like what you see, and want to read the full post, tap the ‘Read This Post’ line and voila..

Here’s the full post with images/photos included, scaled down automatically for your iPhone/iPod Touch screen. If you prefer the regular website-view, scroll down and tap the Mobile Theme switcher.

For watchfreaks, there are some nice iPhone apps out there. Glycine released an iPhone application, displaying a fully working Glycine Airman 17, with the self-winding rotor that moves while you move the iPhone. Bell & Ross released an iPhone app as well, showing a few models from their collection and it gives you an overview of all world wide dealers. And then there is this lame application (at least I think it is), but see for yourself…