Originally Posted by
Idontgram
I guess the prevailing view is that most consumers don’t care and there is no demand pressure for improved movements.
Whilst the above is fair, I would make 3 counter points:
1. It is an unnatural state for an industry not to innovate and improve. Cars, home appliances , computers, power tools all undergo improvements year on year, why should watches be different? Yes quartz is more accurate but whilst there is an interest in mechanical watches, there will be an apetite for ‘new and improved’ movements.
2. To that point, when Rolex/Tudor/omega releases a movement upgrade, there is usually some hullabaloo about it. I’m confident the same would be true of ETA/Sellita. If Damasko loses sales because their chronos are too thick and slab sided, surely they would consider using a new version of the 7750 which was 2-3mm thinner, even if it did raise the cost by a hundred quid.
3. Companies like IWC/Breitling/Oris have been wondering in with newly developed movements over the last few years to a whole load of praise and interest. Sure, they may not have the same market share as Rolex/Omega but they are ‘high street’ brands and they must see some benefit in movement development or else they would continue to sell ETA-powered watches to the naive general consumer.
The ‘no one cares’ argument seems strange, why was the 2892 developed at the end of the quartz crisis if no consumers cared? Why was the Daniels co-axial escapement adapted for mass production? Why the powermatic 80?
I think that for decades, the industry has relied on ETA, hopefully the emergence of competitors (Sellita, Kenisi, Soprod) will drive innovation as they all look for larger market shares. Maybe it’s a pipe dream though...