Swatch Group Takes Aim at Popular Watch Report

By Rob Bates | March 04, 2026

Swatch Group has issued an angry “open letter” denouncing the latest “Swiss Watcher” report by Morgan Stanley and Geneva-based LuxeConsult that even suggested Swatch might sue the report’s authors.

The annual “Swiss Watcher,” which has limited distribution but has been obtained by JCK, is generally considered a valuable—if, inevitably, imprecise—guide to an opaque industry made up mostly of private companies. It includes a table of revenue estimates for the biggest Swiss watch companies.

This year’s report said that Omega, the high-end brand owned by Swatch Group, had fallen to fifth place as far as brand turnover, leading to headlines in watch publications. (Last year, the report had Omega third; it ranked Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe above Omega this year.)

“Omega continued to cede share, particularly to Rolex,” LuxeConsult founder and principal Oliver Müller wrote on LinkedIn when the report came out last month.

In the open letter, Swatch said the report was characterized by a “lack of reliable data” and “questionable methodology,” which led to “incorrect findings.”

“As far as our brands are concerned, the figures in the research are highly inaccurate,” Swatch said. As an example, Swatch noted that the report estimated that turnover for Swatch-owned Tissot declined 5%. According to Swatch, turnover actually rose 3%. (While Swatch is a publicly held company, it does not break out sales results by brand.)

The most eyebrow-raising paragraph of Swatch’s rebuttal invoked a legal threat.

“The research includes statements about sales development and profits of our companies that could seriously undermine customer and retailer trust,” it said. “Some of these wrong statements are so severe that in addition to communication measures, legal action should be considered.”

Müller couldn’t be reached for comment. But in an interview with Hodinkee, conducted before Swatch’s letter was released, the veteran analyst discussed some of the criticism the report has received in the the past, including from Swatch Group.

The report is developed using “a lot of input coming in from upstream, downstream,” Müller said. “And then all of this is being aggregated, rechecked, like you do when you’re a journalist. You have one source, two sources, three sources, and we check if the numbers make sense.

“Year after year, we have more and more [watchmakers] being proactive, meaning they turn toward us even before [the report] is published and they give us some insight on how the business is going. The intelligent [companies] have understood that it’s better to do it before the publishing than come back and try to argue that the numbers are wrong.”

(Photo: Getty Images)