Old-school watchmakers push smart features to counter Apple Watch Global shipments of Swiss watches steadily slipped after the first Apple Watch was unveiled in 2015
Watchmakers, caught off guard by the success of Apple Inc.’s smartwatch, are now trying to keep pace with changing customer tastes by introducing messaging alerts and other high-tech features to traditional watches.Brands including TAG Heuer, Swatch and Fossil Group are working with Apple rivals such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Intel Corp. to offer their own smartwatches or hybrid versions that offer smart functions while retaining traditional design.Global shipments of Swiss watches steadily slipped after the first Apple Watch was unveiled in 2015, a dip compounded by a slump in China sales. Despite picking up in the past two years, they were overtaken last holiday season by Apple’s smartwatch for the first time.
UBS predicts Apple Watch sales will rise 40% next year to reach 33 million. The tech giant is expected to move 8.8 million shipments in the fourth quarter of this year, said Francisco Jeronimo, a research director at International Data Corporation. “The global watch market has had a shock and it worries us,” Daeboong Kim, head of South Korea’s Watch & Clock Industry Cooperative, said in an interview at the world’s biggest industry fair in Hong Kong in September. The cooperative is getting advice from Samsung Electronics Co. , the world’s biggest smartphone maker, to help members develop watches with smart functions. Samsung and Apple declined to comment.Sales of smartwatches overtook mechanical watches in 2016 while hybrid-watch sales rose to 7.5 million world-wide in 2017 from almost nothing in 2015 according to marketresearch firm Euromonitor International. Sales volumes for both watch types are set
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