Market WATCH
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Morgan Stanley just released its annual Watch Report and it’s a downer.
Released in February and reported by Revolution Magazine, it questions whether the Swiss industry still resembles a “market” or something closer to a very polite cartel.
Let’s start with the headline nobody in Geneva wants framed: Switzerland shipped 14.6 million watches in 2025. That’s a multi-decade low with units are down 51% versus the 2011 peak. Translation: Switzerland isn’t making more watches. It’s making fewer watches and charging you more for them. A lot more.
Now, the optimists will say this is simply the triumph of haute horlogerie (fewer pieces, more craft, higher value) but the structure of the market? That’s where things get deliciously uncomfortable.
Morgan Stanley estimates there are roughly 450 Swiss watch brands. Four of them — Rolex, Cartier, Audemars Piguet, and Omega — now control 55% of total industry sales. Up from 52.4% last year. So read that this way: four brands…more than half the pie.
If you’re a mid-tier brand clinging to the idea of “healthy market diversity,” here’s the reality: you’re not fighting peers anymore. You’re fighting gravity. Retail attention is finite. Media oxygen is finite. Client wallets (even in Palm Beach and Dubai) are finite. When four houses hoover up more than half the revenue, everyone else is left politely circling the canapé tray.
Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and Richard Mille — all privately owned — together account for 49.1% of market share. They’ve added +220 basis points year-on-year and a staggering +1,240 bps since 2019. Apparently, being private is the ultimate luxury complication. No quarterly earnings calls. No shareholder tantrums. No need to flood the channel to please analysts. Just controlled scarcity, strategic distribution, and the serene confidence to say, “No, you may not have one.” And they’re doing that continuously.
And then there’s this statistic: Watches priced above $64,000 represented 37% of export value and delivered 89% of growth in 2025 — while accounting for just 1.4% of units.
Read that again.
The industry’s growth is being carried by a microscopic number of ultra-expensive watches sold to a microscopic number of people. Swiss watchmaking is less like a broad luxury category and more like a high-end collectibles market. Of course, that creates a small problem for brands built on “volume luxury.” The more growth migrates north of $64,000, the more uncomfortable life becomes for the $5,000–$15,000 middle class. If you can’t credibly move upmarket, you get squeezed. Or worse, you slowly donate share to the brands that can. The Swiss industry will tell you this is refinement. Elevation. A focus on excellence, but Morgan Stanly’s number suggest that the tent is shrinking, the velvet rope to get in is tightening and the middle grounders will have to eat each other to survive.
We won’t even get into the fact that gold a year ago was 74% cheaper! That’s (apparently) another story. Stay tune
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