Roger Fingas
American sales of conventional watches fell by the steepest amount in seven years during the month of June, a decline linked in part to the debut of the Apple Watch, market research firm NPD Group said on Friday.
Unit sales were down 14 percent year-over-year to about 927,500, the harshest decline since 2008, NPD told Bloomberg. Retail revenue slid by 11 percent to $375 million.
The head of NPD's luxury division, Fred Levin, noted that watches costing less than $1,000 were most likely to be impacted by the Apple Watch, since that's the range in which people have said they're most likely to buy Apple's product. Indeed watches costing between $50 and $999 suffered setbacks in June, although the most damage came in the form a 24 percent drop for pieces costing between $100 and $150.
Lower-cost brands like Timex, Burberry, and Tissot did poorly during the month, as retailers tried to use discounts to combat consumer saturation.
The true impact of the Apple Watch is difficult to gauge, mostly because Apple has refused to share exact sales numbers or even break out Watch revenue reporting into its own category. Bloomberg remarked, though, that since the category containing the Watch gained $950 million within the product's first quarter, Apple presumably sold at least 1.9 million units, assuming an average selling price of $499.
Unmentioned by NPD is what impact other smartwatches might be having. Although devices from the likes of Pebble, Garmin, and Motorola have had relatively modest success, they could be doing well enough to eat into conventional watch sales.
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
144 Comments
Could it be that people considering a new watch waited to see what the Apple Watch was all about? Statistics don't tell the whole story.
Once again reality bumps up against Wall Street's perceptions.
I was hoping to see the ?Watch set up at Best Buy but alas no stores in Minnesota have it. I suppose that's because we have 5 Apple stores in the Twin Cities.
They might be sliding in the US, but the predicted negative impact on Swiss watchmakers does not appear to have happened. Their sales have actually increased slightly, which is astonishing given the recent severe appreciation in the value of the Franc.
Unfortunately for Apple, the expected impact on the Swiss watch market doesn’t appear to have happened and, according to a report Business Insider – it isn’t expected to happen any time soon. This left the prediction of Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, that Swiss watch manufacturers were going to be in “trouble” (according to the New York Times, he chose a “much bolder term than trouble to describe the predicament that Swiss watchmakers would find themselves in”) after the release of the Apple Watch, looking very hollow indeed.
The predicted drop off in sales from Apple 2014 to 2015 never materialised and sales of Swiss watches have actually increased in the United States and in China, places you would expect to be first to adopt the new Apple technology. While there’s still a possibility that sales could start to drop off, most manufacturers are confident that it won’t happen, especially now that the initial “buzz” around the Apple Watch has begun to die off.
https://www.firstclasswatches.co.uk/blog/2015/06/has-the-apple-watch-affected-the-swiss-watchmakers/
[quote name="cnocbui" url="/t/187537/conventional-watch-sales-slide-after-apple-watch-launch-npd-says#post_2757839"]They might be sliding in the US, but the predicted negative impact on Swiss watchmakers does not appear to have happened. Their sales have actually increased slightly, which is astonishing given the recent severe appreciation in the value of the Franc. [URL=https://www.firstclasswatches.co.uk/blog/2015/06/has-the-apple-watch-affected-the-swiss-watchmakers/]https://www.firstclasswatches.co.uk/blog/2015/06/has-the-apple-watch-affected-the-swiss-watchmakers/[/URL] [/quote] What a joke. First of all we have NO idea if Jony Ive made that comment and if he did if he was being serious. It was complete hearsay. Also, when Ive spoke at that Condé Nast luxury conference in Italy he specifically said he didn't think ?Watch was competing with luxury mechanical time pieces (of which I'm sure he owns many). And then he went on to talk about the software and how ?Watch could do things that mechanical watches can't. It's just the stupid media that is trying to turn this into competition between ?Watch and luxury mechanical watches as a way (they think) to make ?Watch look bad.