Apple destroyed the mid-tier watch market. Now it's coming for the $200 billion eyewear industry

Hence The Apple Vision Pro

Apple plans to disrupt the $200B eyewear market the way it disrupted watches. Swatch fell 28%, Fossil 70%. Smart glasses are targeting late 2027.

When Apple launched the Apple Watch in 2015, the mid-tier wristwatch market had a handful of dominant companies. Swatch Group sold watches under Tissot, Hamilton, and Longines. Fossil Group sold under Michael Kors, Armani, and Kate Spade. Movado sold under Coach, Hugo Boss, and Tommy Hilfiger.

Ten years later, the damage is quantifiable. Swatch’s revenue is 28% lower in 2025 than it was in 2014. Fossil’s sales dropped roughly 70%. Apple became the world’s largest watchmaker by unit volume within a few years and last year overtook Rolex as the number one watch brand by revenue. The Apple Watch now generates an estimated $17 billion annually.1

Source: TNW | Apps

NB: The global smart glasses category surged 167% from…

…a year earlier in the first quarter, shipping 2.25 million units worldwide, according to consultancy firm IDC. Meta led the pack with nearly 70% market share, followed by augmented reality-equipped glasses maker Shenzhen RayNeo Technology and Chinese consumer electronics maker Xiaomi, according to IDC.

The smart glasses category is tiny compared with the eyewear market ($0.5 billion vs. $200+ billion). Apple's entry will change that.

It's likely that the Apple product line will be called the Apple Vision line, with the Vision Pro holding the high end.

 

 

1.  "By the end of the 16th cent. eyeglasses were as common in western and central Europe as desktop computers are in western developed countries today." Eyeglasses served an important technological function at both the intellectual and practical level, not only easing the textual studies of scholars but also easing the work of craftsmen/small bus. During the 15th cent. two crucial developments occurred: the ability to grind convex lenses for various levels of presbyopia and the ability to grind concave lenses for the correction of myopia. As a result, eyeglasses could be made almost to prescription by the early 17th cent. -Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes, Vincent Ilardi, American Philosophical Society, 2007.
   
   See also: More than meets the eye.