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So...what happened to the Timepiece Gentleman?

Dogmann
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Hi all,
Whilst Apple and its fan boys may be happy to shout about how many they sell just how much is that actually worth? and compare that to the sales value of all the Swiss watches. I'm fairly confident the Swiss watches values is multiples of the Apple sales figure and then some. Not really comparing Apples to Apples is it comparing Apple to Swiss watches one is really just a consumer electronic gadget phone companion and the other goes from basic to works of art.

Marc
 
MTROIS
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It may be shaped like a watch, it may be worn on the wrist, it may have some of the functionalities of a watch, and it may even contain the term "watch" in its moniker, but an Apple Watch is not a watch!! 😁

::stirthepot::
 
marcn
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W Wahlberg
You do realize what kind of people are enamored with TPG and the other youtube crowd? They like the glitter and glamour, the fast cars, the drama and only know Rolex, AP and RM. They don't care about anything else. Those aren't watch lovers or is the crowd that Patek wants.

It's one thing to personally dislike TPG's content, but allowing your dislike to develop into a caricature of the people you believe consume that content is problematic.
 
marcn
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MTROIS MTROIS
It may be shaped like a watch, it may be worn on the wrist, it may have some of the functionalities of a watch, and it may even contain the term "watch" in its moniker, but an Apple Watch is not a watch!! 😁

::stirthepot::

While I'm not an Apple employee, but coming from a SaaS company, I think it's pretty clear that Apple is just as interested in subscription compute services as they are in making the hardware that can facilitate subscription compute services. Right now, the wrist is just a good piece of relatively vacant physical real estate upon which to hang a device that can offer such services. But I don't believe for a second Apple wouldn't kill off the Apple Watch if they found a better way to make the hardware even less obtrusive.
 
Omegafanman
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marcn marcn
While I'm not an Apple employee, but coming from a SaaS company, I think it's pretty clear that Apple is just as interested in subscription compute services as they are in making the hardware that can facilitate subscription compute services. Right now, the wrist is just a good piece of relatively vacant physical real estate upon which to hang a device that can offer such services. But I don't believe for a second Apple wouldn't kill off the Apple Watch if they found a better way to make the hardware even less obtrusive.

I somehow know you were going to write that :0),,,,

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, by way of blogger and cartoonist Tim Urban, has revealed in a 36,400-word illustrated explainer the thinking behind his new company Neuralink and its mission to use brain implants to directly link human minds to computers.

The post argues that we should augment the slow, imprecise communication of our voices with a direct brain-to-computer linkup. This would permit both telepathy between people and advantageous relations with artificial intelligence, says Musk.

Musk even gives a time line. He says that within eight to 10 years healthy people could be getting brain implants as new computer interfaces.
 
MRC
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Omegafanman Omegafanman
This would permit both telepathy between people....

"But don't ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to"

 
Scooterino36
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MTROIS MTROIS
It may be shaped like a watch, it may be worn on the wrist, it may have some of the functionalities of a watch, and it may even contain the term "watch" in its moniker, but an Apple Watch is not a watch!! 😁

::stirthepot::

The telling of time is the least useful thing an Apple Watch does. It’s functionality as a fitness device/extension of your phone is why it’s useful.

I for one am trying to be less and less connected to devices, but I’m surely in the minority of my mid 30’s age group.
 
Scarecrow Boat
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Scooterino36 Scooterino36
for one am trying to be less and less connected to devices, but I’m surely in the minority of my mid 30’s age group.
You aren’t alone (I’m 33) but we definitely don’t make up the majority.
 
ConElPueblo
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IMO, the people here saying that a rather expensive, watch-shaped gadget will spell the doom on affordable watches are seeing this firmly from their own perspective.

To a lot of people, $2-300 is a pretty large amount of money and the added connectivity is not useful for everyone. For instance, I don't think I have seen more than a few fellow soldiers wearing one and even then it was an officer working from a desk (nothing wrong with that, I might add 😁 ).

It's a city people gadget and they weren't the ones wearing g-shocks (professionally at least) or similar to begin with.
 
Doc Savage
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tyrantlizardrex tyrantlizardrex
This is true - however, the Swiss Watch industry isn't the watch industry. And I think that a lot of journalists forget this, or are persuaded to forget this, because it is the story that Apple want to tell.

Roberta's article says that in 2019 the Swiss watch industry sold 21.1 million units.

In 2017, Casio sold 8.5 million G-Shocks.

I suspect that Citizen and Seiko might have some serious unit sales numbers too...
The Swiss watch market DWARFS the Apple watch market in revenue by a factor of 20:1, based on publicly available information. Apple hypes the numbers shipped (which is, admittedly, impressive), but they conveniently leave out the actual price numbers because they are tiny compared to the Swiss.
 
Norfolk
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MRC MRC
"But don't ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to"

OMG just watch that. Saw Peter Green do it live over 40 years ago. Wow....thank you!
 
tyrantlizardrex
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ConElPueblo ConElPueblo
IMO, the people here saying that a rather expensive, watch-shaped gadget will spell the doom on affordable watches are seeing this firmly from their own perspective.

To a lot of people, $2-300 is a pretty large amount of money and the added connectivity is not useful for everyone. For instance, I don't think I have seen more than a few fellow soldiers wearing one and even then it was an officer working from a desk (nothing wrong with that, I might add 😁 ).

It's a city people gadget and they weren't the ones wearing g-shocks (professionally at least) or similar to begin with.

Absolutely this.
 
TDBK
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Doc Savage Doc Savage
The Swiss watch market DWARFS the Apple watch market in revenue by a factor of 20:1, based on publicly available information. Apple hypes the numbers shipped (which is, admittedly, impressive), but they conveniently leave out the actual price numbers because they are tiny compared to the Swiss.
I think it's closer to 2:1 unless you have other data:

Deloitte puts Swiss watch revenue at CHF 21B in 2019 [here]. (In 2019, USD to CHF was pretty close to 1:1.)

Counterpoint claims Apple's watch revenue in Q3 2020 (Apple's fiscal Q4) were $2.3B [here]. That quarter, Apple reported $7.9B in "wearables, home, and accessories" revenue (which includes AirPods, Beats, watches, homepod, and others). Wearables as a whole did $30B in fiscal 2020. I think there's a lot of data to indicate that Apple is on a >$10B annual run rate in watch revenue.

So I don't know how much Swiss watch revenue has moved in a year and a half, but I think it's a fair guess that Apple's sales are close to half of the Swiss market, and it's quite likely that they're growing faster. Apple's wearables business grew +76% over 2 years, so if the watch business is growing at the same rate as the rest of the group, and continues to, Apple's watch revenue could well match Swiss revenue in a couple of years.

I'd be interested in your contradictory publicly available information.
 
tyrantlizardrex
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TDBK TDBK
That page compares smartphones with all mobile phones. It claims that there's 3.8B smartphones and 1.1B other mobile phones, for a total of 4.9B mobile phones. So 2.7B more smart phones than basic "dumb" cell phones.

Yep - you win the actually reading the page, rather than skimming it and being smug award for the day. 😗::facepalm1::☕
 
redpcar
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tyrantlizardrex tyrantlizardrex
Yep - you win the actually reading the page, rather than skimming it and being smug award for the day. 😗::facepalm1::☕
Be sure and look up their definition of smart phone. Sometimes "smart" only means bluetooth.
 
Doc Savage
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TDBK TDBK
I think it's closer to 2:1 unless you have other data:

Deloitte puts Swiss watch revenue at CHF 21B in 2019 [here]. (In 2019, USD to CHF was pretty close to 1:1.)

Counterpoint claims Apple's watch revenue in Q3 2020 (Apple's fiscal Q4) were $2.3B [here]. That quarter, Apple reported $7.9B in "wearables, home, and accessories" revenue (which includes AirPods, Beats, watches, homepod, and others). Wearables as a whole did $30B in fiscal 2020. I think there's a lot of data to indicate that Apple is on a >$10B annual run rate in watch revenue.

So I don't know how much Swiss watch revenue has moved in a year and a half, but I think it's a fair guess that Apple's sales are close to half of the Swiss market, and it's quite likely that they're growing faster. Apple's wearables business grew +76% over 2 years, so if the watch business is growing at the same rate as the rest of the group, and continues to, Apple's watch revenue could well match Swiss revenue in a couple of years.

I'd be interested in your contradictory publicly available information.
I re-ran the numbers (originally calculated in my head!), and I realize I missed a decimal place. Thanks for the impetus to recheck my work.

Apple claims 30 million watches sold in 2019, and at an average price of $400 per watch, that equals about $12 billion in sales (my original number was $1.2 billion - hence the rough 20:1 ratio). This corrected figure is a lot closer to the Swiss sales, but still a far cry from crushing the Swiss watch market.

An interesting follow-up question is this - how much more will the Apple watch market grow? I think they have pretty much saturated the market of potential buyers. I might be wrong, but I'm not sure there's much growth left in this product line.

EDIT: I think Apple is a great company and I own their stock. I just don't like what they call a watch 😁
Edited:
 
Foo2rama
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Engee Engee
Does anyone here actually believe this? That Apple watches are a gateway to watch collection for a meaningful number of people?

I don’t.
Yes. Lots of people that had never worn a watch got used to wearing a watch with the Apple Watch. Then got sick of its limitations or more commonly the incessant notifications. They then went looking for a cool fashion statement. They tended to turn to either crap fashion brands hence the explosion of them in the past few years, or went for affordable vintage and started scaling up. It’s fairly well documented.
 
TasMike
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A great demonstration of just how important and world famous these clowns are... they've even been forgotten in a thread devoted to them.
 
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