Apple has quietly become the largest watchmaker in the world by unit sales, shipping more than twice as many watches as the entire Swiss industry combined — but the Swiss industry, which dismissed the Apple Watch in 2015, has discovered something more interesting: they’ve held onto the high end, and Rolex alone is now closing in on Apple Watch by revenue

In 2014, just before the Apple Watch launched, Jean-Claude Biver — then the head of TAG Heuer and one of the most respected figures in Swiss watchmaking — was asked what he thought of the upcoming device. He said it had “no sex appeal.” He said it looked like something “designed by a student in