In 2022, the value of Swiss watch exports reached 24.8 billion Swiss francs, an all-time high.

But the volume of those exports — the number of watches shipped — was just 15.8 million. While that was more than the 13.8 million timepieces produced during the lockdowns of 2020, it was far fewer than the 28.1 million exported as recently as 2015, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry.

What has all that meant for consumers? The math is simple: There are fewer Swiss watches for sale. And the ones that are, cost more.

“It’s very clear that the Swiss watch industry has been increasing average prices over the past 10 to 15 years and not the number of watches,” Raynald Aeschlimann, president and chief executive of Omega, said. “And let’s face the reality — this is a trend in the luxury business. And we are part of that business.”

Yet a closer inspection of the federation’s statistics shows that only one segment of the market really has been affected: watches with an export price of less than 500 Swiss francs, or $557 — which, at retail, would be roughly $1,000 or less.

Last year just 10.6 million watches in that price range were exported, less than half the 23.2 million shipped in 2015.

The Competition

Industry experts said Swiss brands had just been reacting to forces beyond their control.

Since 2015, when Apple introduced its Watch, “the entry-level and midrange segments have seen heightened competition from connected watches and non-Swiss-made fashion watches,” Jean-Daniel Pasche, president of the federation, wrote in an email.

Apple has never disclosed the Watch’s sales, but according to the Apple-tracking website Above Avalon, sales in 2022 reached 42 million, an increase of 4 percent year-over-year. If that estimate is accurate, Apple sold almost more than three times the total number of watches exported from Switzerland last year.

And overall, the smartwatch industry — which ranges from watches made in China that cost around $50 to Louis Vuitton’s Tambour Horizon Light Up, starting at $3,405 — has continued to grow as consumers look to smartwatches for health-monitoring information. Counterpoint Research, which analyzes the tech industry from its Asia headquarters, reported early this year that shipments of smartwatches rose by 9 percent overall in 2022, but shipments of those costing more than $400 a unit rose 104 percent.

Fashion watches, the mid- to low-price timepieces often sold under a designer name through a licensing arrangement, have seen increases, too. A watch industry report by Mordor Intelligence, a market analysis firm in Hyderabad, India, said “lower-priced and midpriced watches are increasingly gaining market traction due to increasing demand for value-for-product watches and accessories among women.” The report, last updated in January, also listed the Texas-based Fossil Group, whose fashion brands include DKNY and Emporio Armani, among the industry’s major players such as Rolex and Swatch Group.

Mr. Pasche noted that, while such moderately priced watches did not generate the majority of sales among Swiss timepieces, they did create jobs and kept factories busy — much of which would be difficult for brands to amortize given shrinking volumes. Basically, the industry needs scale as well as artisanry.

Moon Madness

There has been some increase in Swiss exports this year: Federation statistics for the first five months of 2023 show a rise of 840,000 units compared with the same period in 2022, an increase of 14.6 percent.

But the increase generally has been credited to a single watch: the MoonSwatch, Swatch and Omega’s co-branded quartz timepiece that practically caused riots when it was introduced in March 2022.

Swatch has been working ever since to meet demand for the watch, which has 11 iterations and a list price of $260.

In January, Nick Hayek, the group’s chief executive, told the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung that Swatch had sold more than one million MoonSwatches. The company’s 2022 annual report described it as a “win-win for watchmaking volumes and the reputation of Swiss Made watches, especially among the younger generation.”

Analysts agree that MoonSwatch has continued to prop up the Swiss industry’s statistics. “The growth is mainly due to the MoonSwatch,” Oliver Müller, founder of the Swiss consultancy LuxeConsult, wrote in an email. “We estimate that it accounts for two thirds of it, or more than 500,000 units.”

And, Mr. Müller noted: “If we take away the phenomenal volumes of the MoonSwatch, growth would be limited to 5 percent.”

So even if exports remain at more or less the same level through 2023, he wrote, “we wouldn’t return to prepandemic volumes.”

Mr. Aeschlimann of Omega agreed that MoonSwatch was largely behind the increases. “Volume has been increased by watches that have a lot of value, but a lower average price, and that’s MoonSwatch,” he said.

However, he also said that the federation’s price categories are “very old-fashioned” — the top category is more than 3,000 Swiss francs — and have not been adjusted to reflect rising prices for the higher quality standards now used by Swiss watch companies.

The average price of an Omega watch, he noted, had tripled over the past 20 years, in part because improvements to materials, resistance and accuracy improved values. (He also said Omega’s volumes were on track to pass 600,000 units this year, which would be an increase of about 20 percent year over year.)

Swiss watch companies rarely reveal their average retail prices, but according to an estimate published in Morgan Stanley’s 2022 annual watch report, Omega’s average price was 6,571 Swiss francs, before tax. (According to the report, Longines is the only Swiss watch company that ranks it among the industry’s top 10 by sales, but whose average price of 1,088 Swiss francs falls short of the federation’s top price category.)

Premiumization, as Morgan Stanley called it in the report and businesses have been talking about for months, has encouraged some midmarket brands such as TAG Heuer to increase their average prices, rather than their volumes, to pursue growth.

“In 2018, our average price point was 2,200” Swiss francs, Frédéric Arnault, TAG Heuer’s chief executive, said. “We recently went above 3,000 Swiss francs.”

Mr. Arnault said that the brand’s output was increasing, but of greater significance was the changing profile of customers. “Ten years ago, the core focus was the customer who had one watch in his lifetime, maybe two, and one of the two had to be a TAG Heuer,” he said. “And yes, it’s true there’s less of this customer, but the collector customer base profile has grown a lot in the past 10 years. There are a lot more people collecting watches and now this is taking a much bigger share in our customers.”

High Prices

Some industry executives are concerned about recent trends. “Everyone is growing, raising prices two or three times a year, but the exercise is very slippery,” said Davide Cerrato, chief executive of the British watch company Bremont. “It’s very easy to go above a psychological level and lose contact with your customer.”

Mr. Cerrato, who joined Bremont in May, made his name at Tudor as its head of marketing, design and product development in the early 2010s when the brand was revived after a long period in the doldrums. He said Tudor had appealed to consumers by appearing to offer better value at a lower price than some of its competitors — and that he intended to do the same at Bremont next year by introducing a model that would cost less than the brand’s current entry-price watch, the $3,445 Broadsword.

Between the pricing changes and the increased competition, “there has been an earthquake” in the Swiss watch industry, he said. “Many customers are now buying something else and I don’t see any way they will come back.”

But Mr. Cerrato and Mr. Arnault of TAG Heuer said that a decline in the public’s appetite for premium watches with a retail price of 1,000 to 3,000 Swiss francs had been exaggerated. “There’s this belief that at that price, volumes are going down,” Mr. Arnault said. “But it’s not what we’re seeing. We’re gaining market share on our competitors. It’s the leaders that are winning.”

Analysts said the trend for declining volumes and increasing prices were a kind of continuous cycle. “The growth opportunities come from providing very special products to the very top of the social pyramid,” Luca Solca, a luxury analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in Switzerland, wrote in an email.

Mr. Solca said similar patterns have been occurring across the luxury sector, particularly in high jewelry. “At the root cause of this is income and wealth inequality, exacerbated by rich consumers getting out of the pandemic with a sigh of relief and a willingness to spend — no matter what,” he wrote.

As long as quality remains high, the watch industry outlook is positive, Mr. Müller of LuxeConsult wrote. “The long-term analysis remains the same, with a strong polarization of the market with the same champion brands, such as Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and Richard Mille. They are on an unabated path of growth.”

So, for now, value continues to be king.