Growth in mainland Chinese interest in premium Swiss watches surges

Watch: Watchmakers show their best time-pieces at Baselworld

While the consumption of luxury goods in mainland China fell sharply last year, online interest in upmarket Swiss watches there remained the highest worldwide, a study has found.

WorldWatchReport's latest edition, released the night before the opening of the Baselworld annual industry trade show in Geneva on Thursday, showed mainland China had the highest year-on-year growth in demand for all luxury watch categories last year, at 59.4 per cent, more than 10 times the global average of 5.7 per cent.

The report, published by market-monitoring firm Digital Luxury, analysed the performance of 62 luxury watch brands across 20 markets from more than one billion watch-related search queries typed into major online search engines.

Baidu, the leading Chinese-language online search service provider, found mainland consumers' thirst for luxury watches showed no signs of a slowdown, despite weak sales last year caused by Beijing's crackdown on extravagance among government officials.

The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry reported last month that the industry's exports to mainland China fell 12.5 per cent year on year to 1.45 billion Swiss francs (HK$12.7 billion). Worldwide, they rose 1.9 per cent to 21.8 billion francs.