On the trail of a 100% Swiss connected watch
To make a splash at the SIHH high watchmaking fair, the Swiss watch brand H. Moser & Cie has just created a buzz by making a cheese watch valued at over one million francs. Through this fantastical model, the watchmaker intends to challenge public opinion on the Swiss Made label which, in its view, is too lax — despite the new law.
The cheese watch
Indeed, since 1 January, objects produced by watchmakers must contain 60% of components made in Switzerland to benefit from the "Swiss Made" label (previously, just half was sufficient). The cheese watch — a 100% Swiss natural resource — mocks the fact that certain brands benefiting from the label do not insist on having all their components manufactured in Switzerland. Transposed to the connected watch, this question takes on an entirely different dimension.
The question is no longer simply whether the brand makes efforts to create jobs in Switzerland, but whether it has the technological know-how to build the product in the country and with what added value.
Three non-Swiss leaders
For some years now this subject has been raised without anyone truly proposing solutions. During this time, three major players have shared the market (Apple, Huawei, Samsung) and more recently, TAG Heuer — the renowned watchmaking brand — entered the race. Yet this last, despite being more expensive, shares the same operating system as the other two and does not currently carry the Swiss Made logo.
Is an innovative country like ours capable of creating a complete connected interface — with hardware built in our factories, but also an operating system and applications designed and developed by our engineers? To achieve this feat, one must not only be innovative; it also requires considerable means. Before embarking on such an enterprise, one must question the true engine of innovation.
One must acknowledge that this engine cannot be motivated solely by the specification sheet regarding the geographical origin of the watch's components. Swiss Made only makes sense because it stamps a quality and innovation effort. It is therefore the latter that must be the centre of our attention. In the connected watch space, the challenge for our country's companies is above all to create a connected watch that presents genuine added value articulated around a disruptive use.
Bringing real added value
What are we capable of bringing more of, or better than, the other innovators working on the connected watch worldwide? A first area of work lies in improving the vital organs: how to make them more efficient? Avenues for reflection have been opened: longer battery life, higher-performance electronics with new sensors… On all these fronts, our engineers are expected to deliver and must prove themselves. But these improvements, purely quantitative in nature, will be far from sufficient.
It is at the level of creativity that Swiss watchmakers must show what they know how to do. In global competition, the only way to differentiate from the connected watch lies in the capacity to bring exclusivity.
Swiss-made connected watches should be equipped with absolutely differentiating functionalities. One avenue would consist of developing peripheral accessories whose use would be exclusively reserved for a specific watch model. One could imagine, for example, a specific sensor that would interact with a golf ball to provide information that only the watch could receive.
Why not a temperature and humidity sensor installed in a wine cellar or a cigar humidor to monitor storage conditions… The logic being to create uses that are made possible only by the addition of a sensor and a specific application — without going through the phone — in order to reinforce the utility of the watch.
Inventing functionalities
The invention of such functionalities would thus allow niche markets to be targeted and would give a new impetus to Swiss watchmaking, in what it knows how to do best: satisfying the desires of clients in search of exclusivity and excellence. Such a product could very well see the light of day in our local Silicon Valley. It should be recalled that despite its small size, our country ranks sixth in the Top 100 Global Innovators Report that has just been published.
If we want to maintain the prestige of Made In Swiss, quite obviously we must fight to ensure products are built in our country. But for that, our engineers must continue to produce disruptive innovations on a par with those that have, throughout history, contributed to the reputation of our local know-how. Otherwise a day will come when this know-how will no longer hold any value — and it will not be because 40% of watch components will come from other lands.
