Elmar Mock, is currently an unemployed town idiot who briefly worked for SMH as a designer when the swatch launched in the late 70's then fired. His opinion on the Swiss industry would be like interviewing the janitor at the White House's comments on the US president's performance.
Given that we're talking about expensive, status watches sold to people with more money than sense, I'm surprised that the decline wasn't greater that the 10-14% range. Most people who would normally buy these Swiss watches continued to buy them, although as someone has noticed, many are so rich they could afford to buy both Swiss and Apple.
Surely a decline in the sub $1000 range is to be expected. I for one minute don't just put this down to the Apple Watch. It will be down to a range of things including all smart wrist worn devices as well as the markets they are quoting.
One thing that will continue to change the whole way people buy watches though is that smart devices are becoming easier to find and cheaper. It's common sense that people will start buying even really cheap fit-bit like devices as long as they tell the time and the added fitness & notification features pushes the consumer to them in the first place.
Consumers that spend $3k+ on the Rolex/Omega/Tag's of this world will probably still continue to spend their money on expensive watches. But what they may do, every now and then is not buy the new Omega this year because there is a nice Smartwatch on the market, so even missing that opne purchase for that year will even make a dent to the sales of the premium market.
The higher end of the market will $10k+ watches will only be affected by the amount of money going around.
In short, I fully expect the "Swiss" watch market to get smaller and sales to go down year on year, especially for the sub $1000 market and even the higher $3k market will see a decline.
I would argue this is already the case and it has been for a long time. The cheapest quartz watch is a better timekeeper than the best mechanical watch, and not just by a little bit. Top-tier mechanical watches meet what is called the COSC Chronometer standard, which allows a drift of up to -4 or +6 seconds per day. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so that represents a timing error of about 0.006%, which is absolutely stupendous for any mechanical system, especially one that is constantly being moved around on your wrist. Typical quartz watches, however, have a timing error of about 0.0006% (half a second a day), which is an order of magnitude better. Good quartz watches reach 0.00008% error or less (0.07 seconds per day).
Even knowing all of this, I still wear my grandfather's Omega. It's jewelry. Rather than gems or precious metals, it has the beauty of mechanical engineering. Mechanical watches are one of the pinnacles of hand-crafted precision. I also wear another device to show me notifications and remind me of appointments.
This is very interesting. So, worst case on these watches, it would take nearly 3 years to lose an hour (assuming it lost 4 seconds a day. Thanks to the wonder of, the pain of Daylight Savings Time, you are resetting your watch on a twice a year basis, so is likely never noticed. It really is amazing they can account for so much and be so precise.
When your daughter was younger you could sell her for a cow and three goats. Now that she has some miles on her, you were thinking of at least a cow and a goat or two. However the offers coming in are in the area of a goat and a couple chickens...
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Elmar Mock, is currently an unemployed town idiot who briefly worked for SMH as a designer when the swatch launched in the late 70's then fired. His opinion on the Swiss industry would be like interviewing the janitor at the White House's comments on the US president's performance.
Surely a decline in the sub $1000 range is to be expected. I for one minute don't just put this down to the Apple Watch. It will be down to a range of things including all smart wrist worn devices as well as the markets they are quoting.
One thing that will continue to change the whole way people buy watches though is that smart devices are becoming easier to find and cheaper. It's common sense that people will start buying even really cheap fit-bit like devices as long as they tell the time and the added fitness & notification features pushes the consumer to them in the first place.
Consumers that spend $3k+ on the Rolex/Omega/Tag's of this world will probably still continue to spend their money on expensive watches. But what they may do, every now and then is not buy the new Omega this year because there is a nice Smartwatch on the market, so even missing that opne purchase for that year will even make a dent to the sales of the premium market.
The higher end of the market will $10k+ watches will only be affected by the amount of money going around.
In short, I fully expect the "Swiss" watch market to get smaller and sales to go down year on year, especially for the sub $1000 market and even the higher $3k market will see a decline.
I would argue this is already the case and it has been for a long time. The cheapest quartz watch is a better timekeeper than the best mechanical watch, and not just by a little bit. Top-tier mechanical watches meet what is called the COSC Chronometer standard, which allows a drift of up to -4 or +6 seconds per day. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so that represents a timing error of about 0.006%, which is absolutely stupendous for any mechanical system, especially one that is constantly being moved around on your wrist. Typical quartz watches, however, have a timing error of about 0.0006% (half a second a day), which is an order of magnitude better. Good quartz watches reach 0.00008% error or less (0.07 seconds per day).
Even knowing all of this, I still wear my grandfather's Omega. It's jewelry. Rather than gems or precious metals, it has the beauty of mechanical engineering. Mechanical watches are one of the pinnacles of hand-crafted precision. I also wear another device to show me notifications and remind me of appointments.
This is very interesting. So, worst case on these watches, it would take nearly 3 years to lose an hour (assuming it lost 4 seconds a day. Thanks to the wonder of, the pain of Daylight Savings Time, you are resetting your watch on a twice a year basis, so is likely never noticed. It really is amazing they can account for so much and be so precise.
Counting this as my thing learned today. Thanks!
Well that was fast.
Both for the Apple Watch to make a dent in the Swiss watch industry, and for the media to make that connection.
I still have my doubts that it's the case. Just anecdotally, here in New York City, I haven't seen that many people wearing them.
When your daughter was younger you could sell her for a cow and three goats. Now that she has some miles on her, you were thinking of at least a cow and a goat or two. However the offers coming in are in the area of a goat and a couple chickens...
Wow! Sexist much?