Sales of Swiss watches are declining, and sales of Apple watches are rising steeply. This must be a surprise to the makers of Swiss luxury watches, who lifted their imperious snouts in disdain at the cough-drop shaped Apple Watch when it first came out. From Enrique Dans's piece in Forbes, titled, How Apple Killed The Swiss Watch Industry:
In 2015, the year the Apple Watch was launched, LVMH watch division president and Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver said the Swiss industry was not afraid of Apple's new product, because it could not be repaired in a thousand years or eighty years, nor inherited by children, nor would it ever become a status symbol. As is always the case when disruption occurs in an industry, traditional competitors are not able to see the threat, and continue to try to analyze it according to the variables that were important yesterday.
Dans writes, "As soon as you start using the Apple Watch, you realize one thing is clear: the rest of your watch collection will live on in a drawer from now on."
Photo by Chris Abney on Unsplash
