How TAG Heuer, Breitling and other luxury brands are changing the face of the smartwatch industry
In 1982, after taking a licking from Japanese competitors that had championed quartz batteries, the Swiss watch industry was facing an existential crisis. But rather than seeing the mechanical movement as a weakness, Jean-Claude Biver, 65, who had recently purchased the defunct Blancpain brand, boldly declared that this artful anachronism represented the industry’s future. “Since 1735, there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch,” Biver’s new slogan declared. “And there never will be.” A decade later, he backed up his words with results and sold Blancpain to the Swatch Group for $43 million.
Today, the Swiss watch industry is again robust—in 2013, there were more than $20 billion in exports—but the advent of the smartwatch and the release of the Apple Watch have pessimists once again wondering if time is running out on tradition.
(This story appears in the 15 May, 2015 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)