There are few takers for Swiss and Hong Kong watches, the kind worn mainly by the uber-rich globally. Sales data for the first ten months of calendar year 2016 reveal that export of watches made in Switzerland and Hong Kong are consistently on the decline, sharper in the case of Hong Kong.
This, even as smartwatch sales too are on a freefall, declining 51 percent in the September 2016 quarter.
In October, exports of Swiss watches dropped 16 percent to CHF 1,677 million, the biggest fall in 2016. The declining trend set in last year after witnessing weak growth of 1.9 percent in the preceding two years, a far cry from the 19.4 percent growth achieved in 2011.
"There were declines in exports to Europe, Hong Kong, the US, and Japan. There were also falls across all price brackets, from CHF0-200 low-priced watches through to high-ticket watches prices above CHF3,000," Yu Okazaki , analyst at Nomura Securities Corporation wrote in a note on Tuesday.
For Hong Kong, the situation was grimmer, with exports falling 20.7 percent to HKD 6,098 million, and just a tad less from the 23 percent slump witnessed in February.
"As with Swiss watch exports, there were declines across all major markets, including Europe, the US, and Japan. There were also large falls for quartz and mechanical watches alike," Yu Okazaki said.
Swiss watch exports to Japan dropped 14 percent in October and for Hong Kong, it was high at 27.4 percent. "Sales appear to have remained weak at both department stores and big-box retailers," Okazaki said.
Global smartwatch sales stood at 2.7 million in the September 2016, marking a fall of 51.6 percent from 5.6 million shipped in the corresponding quarter last year, according to IDC report released in October.
The fall was the sharpest in Moto G at 73.3 percent to 100,000 units while for Apple, the decline was 71.6 percent to 1.1 million units. Samsung witnessed 9 percent increase to 400,000 units.
