Morgan Stanley’s Top 20 Swiss Watch Company Ranking for 2024 has just been released.
The secrecy of the Swiss watch industry is something that will probably never change, and because of companies like Morgan Stanley will produce these highly useful mathematical estimates that give everyone an idea of watch company market share, unit sales, sales revenue, and so forth.
This chart is one part of an in-depth Swiss watch industry report that’s co-authored by Oliver R. Muller of LuxeConsult and published annually by Morgan Stanley. The above chart represents the entire calendar year 2023 and is an estimate (actual numbers are not directly provided by watch brands).
Morgan Stanley’s Top 20 Swiss Watch Company Ranking provides a good picture of what’s happening at the top of the Swiss watch industry. It’s a scoreboard for the best-selling watch brands in terms of revenue and units. Perhaps best of all, it gives consumers, retailers, and industry executives a general idea of where the leading Swiss watch brands stand on a year-to-year basis.
Interestingly, for 2023, Tissot has moved up two spots from number 12 last year to number 10 this year, while Tudor has moved down two spots from number 15 last year to number 17 this year.
Not even in the top 20 since 2018, Swatch has jumped back onto the chart at 13, certainly as a result of its bestselling MoonSwatch, which by unit is likely the highest-selling model by unit volume in the entire Swatch Group.
The top 5 (Rolex, Cartier, Omega, Audemars Piguet, and Patek Philippe) have stayed put. Though number 2 Cartier has reportedly seen a huge increase in revenue, putting significantly more room between number 3 Omega, number 4 Audemars Piguet, and number 5 Patek Philippe.
TAG Heuer, IWC, Hublot, Bulgari, and Panerai have all seen either a one or two-spot drop. Hermes is up one spot. And Blancpain, which was ranked number 19 last year, has dropped out of the top 20, replaced by none other than its entry-level sister brand Swatch, which ironically offers a cheap plastic version of the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, that boosted Swatch’s, not Blancpain 2023 sales.
Even if Rolex’s entry-level Tudor brand dropped two spots, the market leader Rolex continues to dominate, with an estimated total market share of over 30% and more than $10 billion in annual sales at wholesale (which is over $17 billion at retail).
Number 2 Swiss watch brand Cartier is on fire as of late and while they won’t be catching up to Rolex anytime soon, they’ve significantly increased the distance between themselves and everyone below them. Lastly, Chopard continues to hang around for a second year at the number 20 spot.
In recent years, we’ve seen more iterative product extensions than actual innovation, coupled with massive price hikes, which suggests Swiss watch companies are focusing on moving fewer products at higher prices, not to mention making fewer product enhancements. Moreover, the brands that made the most disproportionate price increases could see gains — but it’s a risk as consumers are more well-informed than ever and will not likely take such unjustified price hikes lightly.
Source: LuxeConsult, Morgan Stanley Research.
Editor’s note: All rankings are based on estimated sales revenue, not numbers directly reported by watch brands.
