I agree, the only people this will really effect are brands that relied heavily on ETA ebauches, which is why I think we saw Panerai, Breitling, and Tag Heuer all introduce new movements recently.

Unfortunately there are some more affordable brands [I'll refrain from naming any of them] who saw the announcement as an opportunity to market watches with preproduced full ETA movements as “rare”, or “hard to obtain” when in fact what they generally use are unmodified [minus maybe a rotor engraving] full ETA movements that should still be available. Sellita may have just been fortunate enough to have benefited from the misinformation that was being released.

I do still believe the SW500 is an important launch, if only to bring more choice of Swiss movements to the market and helps keep the costs at a fair level to the consumer.

I also wonder if certain brands [like in the Oris level territory] if they would consider switching their line.

I do wonder if there hasn’t been an over-reaction to the Swatch announcement. My understanding (and always happy to be corrected) is that ETA will continue to provide finished ETA movements outside the Swatch Group. What they will not do is supply just the ebauche.

Presumably, there are a bunch of brands out there who buy the ebauche, finish it themselves and so claim to be watchmakers…and presumably at a lower cost than buying a finished movement.

Perhaps the real question is this: What constitutes an ebauche? If TAG fit a decorated rotor to an ETA 2824 and call it a Calibre 17, will anything change? Will ETA still sell TAG Heuer the movement? From what I’ve read, yes.

Of course, what impacts TAG Heuer is very different to what impacts the smaller independent guys, who I accept will now have to buy in full movements.

Is this a seismic change? Maybe I’m missing something, or too focused on what goes on at a large volume producer like TAG.

Cheers

dc