In the tech world, the biggest brands have an incredible influence on their immediate competitors. Apple's impact on the recent Mobile World Congress show and its related unveiling of the Apple Watch on March 9 proved yet again why it is the most powerful name in tech.

The Cupertino, California, giant wasn't even in Barcelona for the annual mobile tech gathering of 2,000 companies. But in preparation for the Apple Watch's debut — on top of the already-existing momentum in wearables several competitors released their watches at the show.

Perhaps the most well-reviewed watch at the event was the offering from Chinese company Huawei, whose Huawei Watch looks decidedly unlike most of the smartwatches available to consumers today. In the words of Mashable's Samantha Murphy Kelly, the watch fills a void in the market.

"Finally, a device you could accidentally mistake for a traditional watch," Kelly writes.

However, it's not an item that's aimed at the average tech-minded buyer's price range. Amazon's German website listed the watch for 999 euro, or $1,080, on March 8. Huawei also has to get a foothold in the U.S. market, but it reportedly has major plans in 2015 to do so.

HTC's Grip, in a partnership with Under Armour, is one part smartwatch and one part fitness band. While the Grip's display is somewhat basic, it has features comparable to most any current fitness band or smartwatch, including phone notifications, GPS and syncing to a fitness app. It will be available only in the U.S. for $199.

LG's Watch Urbane LTE will only be available in South Korea at launch, but it's most notable for what it doesn't have. Many Android-affiliated smartphone-makers have used Google's Android Wear operating system for their smartwatches, but that software has been criticized for having a messy interface that doesn't allow the user to control what appears on the watch face.

In response, the Watch Urbane LTE runs on LG's in-house webOS. The product also doesn't require connection to a phone, and can call and text on its own with its own phone number. If the OS and the watch-as-phone concepts catch on, the Urbane LTE could be revolutionary even if it never appears on an American shelf.

Samsung, Apple's main rival in the smartphone world, debuted the newest in its line of flagship Galaxy phones, the S6, in Barcelona. It features an Apple Pay competitor, Samsung Pay, and a curved-screen model, the Edge S6. But Samsung did not release a new model of its Gear smartwatch, making it the highest-profile smart-gadget-maker to not get ahead of the Apple Watch event.

As for Apple's "Spring Forward" event, held nearly 6,000 miles from MWC in San Francisco, CEO Tim Cook announced a new noncable-based subscription partnership for Apple TV, Apple Pay in vending machines, and a new app that allows users to participate in medical research, among other announcements, before getting to the headliners of the event: a new, ultra-lightweight, ultrathin MacBook and the Apple Watch.

Cook said upon the beginning of the Apple Watch portion of the event, "Apple Watch is the most personal device we have ever created. It's not just with you, it's on you."

Cook and technology vice president Kevin Lynch went through a number of features, apps and other conveniences during the debut, all of which aim to give the user quicker access to the technology available on their iPhones, albeit on a smaller platform. Airline boarding passes, home security cameras, ordering a car on Uber and making phone calls on the watch itself were just some of the various quirks and added features the Apple Watch contains to distinguish itself from competitors.

However, the fact that the Apple Watch and other smartwatches can do so many things that their smartphone relatives can also do points at perhaps the biggest question about the watches: Why would consumers pay hundreds of dollars for what is essentially a much smaller and more constraining phone?

The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel wrote during the event, "Apple is really running into the same problem as ... Android Wear — sure, you can put apps on this thing, but you've got a bigger screen, a better battery and faster processor in your pocket."

In the coming days, echoes of "Why would I possibly need this?" are likely to fill the social media feeds and posts of the most common tech consumer that brands are targeting. As of yet, companies have not demonstrated a significant need for the products.

Apple Watch has a chance to turn the market around. After all, as some astute tech writers have noted, the iPad wasn't exactly thought to fill a great need in tech five years ago upon its debut, but is now as recognizable a product as any in the tech world.