During the annual hiatus, Chronoswiss took advantage of the peace and quiet to organise an impressive inauguration of its new headquarters right in the heart of Lucerne, which is rumoured to be the third biggest city in the world in terms of watch sales. A shrewd move in both the geographical and figurative senses, therefore, by owners Eva and Oliver Ebstein.

The industry returned to work to discover the finalists for this year’s Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, as selected by the jury. Long before the awards ceremony at the end of October, one clear winner had already emerged, with the Swatch Group dominating the finalists in a number of categories on its return to the competition.

In September, the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris asserted itself as an important showcase for high-jewelry watches, with a number of the more jewelry-oriented brands seizing the opportunity to present some stunning new timepieces. Three tenth anniversaries in the same month (Greubel Forsey, Hautlence and Pierre DeRoche) also indicated that 2004 was clearly a great year to launch a new watch brand ! An altogether bigger milestone was marked by Patek Philippe with lavish celebrations of its 175^th anniversary in Geneva, covered in a two-part special on WorldTempus.

The last quarter also saw one of the most-hyped but also the most disappointing new watch launches of the year. Not only did Apple drop the ubiquitous lower-case “i” for its new Apple Watch, it also dropped any mention of battery life or water resistance – the two specifications that could make or break the product. With the main boasts of this much anticipated new timepiece being a sapphire crystal and a crown(!), the Swiss watch industry breathed a huge sigh of relief before heading off to Watches&Wonders in Hong Kong, where Montblanc presented a watch whose display could be re-configured at the touch of a button – but without any battery, electronics or mobile phone required.