It’s Not Technology That Will Take The Swiss Watch Down

Earlier this year Apple reported that the Apple Watch sold more in the last quarter of 2017 than the entire Swiss watch industry combined, surpassing legacy giants such as Rolex and Swatch. This came as a pleasant surprise for the makers of a gadget heavily criticized in the beginning for not performing well in sales or not being that useful. In Switzerland, news of the shifting trends in timepiece sales is stirring a wide range of opinions. The watch has over the centuries become an icon of the Alpine country, and experts say the European country can either capitalize on the smartwatch hype and overcome yet another period of industry disruption or simply see a staple industry fade from within. The Apple Watch, an Apple product released in 2015, sold 8 million units in the last quarter of 2017, while sales of Swiss watches overall barely reached 6.8 million units in the same time period. This seemed to strike hard in the reputation of an industry that had been around for centuries and is in many ways synonymous with Switzerland itself. Read more at CNBC.