There is one thing missing in this thread. The Swiss Watch industry's main purchasers are men. Men buy the expensive high end, and mostly the mid range as well. Women do not tend to buy expensive watches; they spend on other jewelry instead.
The Apple Watch will be mostly purchased by women and not men. Apple knows this. Look at the modeling of the watch on their site and its almost all women wearing it. They had a women on stage during the announce of it. If its sucessful it will be a female market.
Women shoppers follow fashion and have no problem spending large amounts of money on an expensive status symbol that falls out of style rather rapidly and loses all its value and is replaced. Think expensive purses and shoes here. They do this to display status to each other. This is where apple will sell the watch, if it sells. But it won't hurt the Swiss makers much, if at all. They're really trying to open a new market here, but fashion is fickle, and it may boom for a year or three and then die rapidly, or not take off at all.