Swatch loses about $ 1 billion in market value after Apple Watch Series 3 announcement – and the trend is getting worse

To introduce the new generation of the Apple watch, the Apple Watch Series 3, Tim Cook started his presentation last Tuesday showing where the company is in the ranking of best selling watches in the world. (Spoiler: 1st place).

In any market that Apple enters, potential competitors shudder, which is quite understandable in the case of the most valuable company in the world. And it was no different when Apple entered the watch industry, so much so that one of the creators of Swatch admittedly stated that they “would be in danger”.

Now it seems that this has come true: as soon as Apple unveiled the Watch Series 3, the shares of the Swiss watchmaker fell about 4.5%, losing about $ 1 billion of its market value, as explained by the Business Insider.

Swatch Watches

This reaction may portray the challenges that some watchmakers are facing when competing with super-tech watches. In an interview conducted by BloombergJon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, spoke about the novelty this time in a way not favorable for the Swiss manufacturer:

The fact that the new watch has removed the dependency on the phone has the potential to be innovative. It is a fight for a place on the wrists and excellent features against a simple quartz watch. In many cases, the quartz watch will lose.

To add more fuel to the battle, another analyst (Luca Solca, from Exane BNP Paribas) stated that smart watches are “far from being a fad”, that they “are here to stay, continued to update their features and the announcement of new Apple Watch proves it ”.

The same manufacturer has already clashed with Apple when there was news that it would use the name “iWatch”. Perhaps to really face it, Apple also put the manufacturer against the wall when she decided to use the slogan “Tick different” for looking a lot like the famous “Think different”. That is, perhaps this rivalry is only making things worse for the Swiss manufacturer.

If we look at the big picture, certainly smartwatches (not just Apple’s, obviously) will continue to conquer more and more space and be updated regularly. The century-old watch industry to watch out for!