“The Swatch watch is unwinding,” Andrea Felsted and Alex Webb report for Bloomberg. “The Swiss manufacturer of its namesake brand and higher-end timepieces such as Harry Winston is facing twin pressures.”
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“The company on Thursday reported worse-than-expected 2018 sales and profits. It was hurt by a slowdown in China in the final three months of the year,” Felsted and Webb report. “While some luxury players, including LVMH, have said that China is holding up, or even improving, that doesn’t seem to be the case in watches. Swiss exports to China fell 10 percent in December, a worrying sign for the industry. Swatch is particularly vulnerable – some 35 percent of revenue was generated from Greater China in 2017, according to Bloomberg data.”
“But there is another threat,” Felsted and Webb report. “In 2018, the annual volume of the devices sold by Apple Inc. might have matched or even exceeded that of the entire Swiss watch industry. The competition has already eaten into the nation’s exports of lower-priced timepieces.”
“The situation is about to get worse,” Felsted and Webb report. “Revenue from [Apple’s] Wearables, Home and Accessories vertical, which also includes the HomePod smartspeaker and AirPod earphones, jumped 33 percent in the three months through December… Three years ago, Swiss manufacturers mocked the Apple watch. Now, they are no longer laughing.”
