The Baselworld Expo Will Reveal How Traditional Watchmakers Will Contend With the Apple Watch

Basel, Switzerland is a small town that straddles the Rhine and sits right near both the French and German borders. It's best known for pharmaceutical giants and its eponymous art fair that travels to Miami and Hong Kong, but every spring for the last 98 years, Basel has also been taken over by the watch and jewelry industries, which gather to show off their latest wares. Welcome to Baselworld.

Swiss baubles and timepieces have been hocked in Basel since 1917, though it was as part of a larger show of industry until 1973. At that time, new quartz watches from Japan had traditional mechanical watchmakers on their heels; in a play for prestige, the brands showing in Basel developed their own expo. Eventually Swiss makers and their foreign counterparts made peace, and in 1986 the Basel show (called Baselworld since 2003) welcomed non-Swiss brands for the first time.