Sometimes Apple uses its own keys proud that Apple Watch is the world's first watch, even beating Rolex. But what real impact does the Apple Watch have on the analog watch market?
Do traditional watches really suffer from the effects of growing competition with the emergence of Apple Watch and others smartwatches? We've investigated it.
Apple does not release actual Apple Watch sales statistics. However, sales prices were obtained by Analytical Strategy suggest that Apple sell about 31 million watches in 2019, which is 36 percent more than 2018. On the other hand, and according to Suti Analytics, the Swiss watch industry sold almost 21.1 million units, resulting in a 13% down.
However, in our research we have used data provided by the Federation of the Swiss watch industry. The organization publishes an annual report containing sales numbers and divides many categories. You can read his latest report here.
We also obtained historical data from 2007 at the corporate news office, which has helped us prepare the sale of mechanical and mechanical watches since 2005.
Based on this information, we get the following picture: Swiss clock sales have stabilized since 2013 with an estimated 7.5 million sales per year (green line). In fact, sales have risen in 2018, and by 2019 Swiss watches have broken the record of nearly 17 billion Swiss Francs.
The situation is somewhat different for quartz watches: in this case (blue bars), sales remain stable at around 3.5 million for five years, while the number of watches sold has fallen slightly.
In 2009, during the economic crisis, approximately 18,000 million watches were sold (blue line). After that, the numbers grew slowly and remained stable or steadily stabilizing for three years, from 2013 to 2015. It was then that sales of quartz watches began to slow down and continued to do so. Sales recently plummeted to $ 2.8 billion, a decline that was only hampered by the recession in 2009 (when it dropped to 3.5 billion units).
Because the Apple Watch was released in 2015, there may be a connection between the likes of smartwatch from Apple (and other monitors fitness) and the decline in sales of other cheap Swiss quartz watches.
The smartwatches
However, people seem to continue to buy more expensive mechanical watches. The smartwatches and guardians of fitness they cannot compete with them, on the contrary: people seem to be interested in spending more money. These clocks can be a good investment as banks continue to offer lower interest rates.
Of course, the Apple Watch has carved a niche in the market and that cheap quartz watches have to fight hard, especially now because Series 5 it now has a full-time screen function (which until then has been one of its biggest issues).
You can choose between three finishes and an endless selection of apple-watching strips (some even come from a haute couture product like Hermès), and that makes Apple look and piece of jewelry just like any other quartz watch.
But the Apple Watch cannot compete with the luxury watches considered "status symbol". Apple has tried it with the Apple Watch which costs around € 18,500. Instead of continuing on this path, the company has stopped competing with Rolex or Tag Heuer and instead opted to focus on healthcare now.
First article published in Macwelt.
