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Can the Swiss Watchmaker Survive the Digital Age?

Can the Swiss Watchmaker Survive the Digital Age?

June 4, 2015

Clive Thompson, NY Times:

Is the smartwatch the next “quartz crisis”? Few Swiss executives think smartwatches will kill off the high-end market. Nobody, they argue, who spends $50,000 on a piece of handmade eternity will regard an Apple Watch as a substitute. But luxury brands also sell a great many less-expensive quartz watches, and this is where the Apple Watch poses a threat.

“If a young man, young woman, is 25 years old, would they rather put 1,200 Swiss francs” — about $1,300 — “for a watch that tells you what time it is and the date, or will they buy, for only $800, a watch that tells you everything?” Biver said. “For me there is no doubt we will have a very tough competition in the $1,200 price segment.

As a person who’s owned several watches both cheap and expensive, I personally feel like the analog watch world, in the long run, is under great threat. It’s easy to look at the Apple Watch today and scoff at its existence thinking “no way will they effect the high end.” But it’s those very same people who scoffed at the iPhone and the iPad that eventually realized they were wrong.

Today, the smartwatch is already 10x if not more capable than almost any analog watch in existence. What happens in five to ten years from now when the advancements that occur are not only local on the Watch itself, but also in the world we live in? I’ve already met people who’ve given up wearing several thousand dollar watches in favor of the Apple Watch. Why? Because it does way more than just look nice and tell the time. This trend will continue in my opinion and over the long run I bet that even people who wear $20,000+ watches will consider taking it off in favor of something like an Apple Watch Edition.

Today, most of us look at smartphones as the only possible phone to own. Having anything else seems like you’re losing out on so much. If I were a betting man, I’d say the same thing will happen with watches within the next decade.