These Are the 7 Best-Selling Watches of All-Time
Want more watch coverage? Get About Time, Esquire’s free newsletter devoted to the watch world, in your inbox every Sunday. Sign up here
We'll level with you – no one actually knows what the best-selling watches in the world are. None of the big luxury brands reveal detailed numbers on how many units they produce, and you can parse the different references to create any ranking you like (are we including all Rolex Submariners, say? Counting 5512s and 5514s separately? And what about all the Submariners made by Rolex but badged up as Tudors?).
But by crunching the available data, making some educated guesses, and tapping our insider network, we can come up with a decent guess at the world's most popular timepieces.
Apple Watch Series 10
Apple Watch: 300 million
If we bundle together every model and generation, the Apple Watch is arguably the most popular watch of all time. By the end of 2023, it had sold around 270 million units, which is almost triple the number of the watch that everyone always thinks is the world's best-selling watch, the Casio F-91W, which you'll now find one place below.
As is Apple's wont, it's made its brand synonymous with a sector that it didn't invent – that honour belongs either to the 1998 Linux watch, or the 2012 Pebble, which had a gangbusters Kickstarter campaign that made big brands take the idea seriously – but which through relentless innovation and endless marketing dollars, it has come to dominate. Although the Apple Watch contributes a comparatively small fraction of the company's revenue – it's lumped in with headphones and Apple TVs, which all stack up to around 9% last year – personal health is a pet project for CEO Tim Cook, and the Apple Watch is leading its charge.
Such is the popularity of the smartwatch that the next few places on this list should really go to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Watch, and the Fitbit, which have moved nine-figure volumes in the last decade. But that's a bit boring, and we're here to talk watches, not wrist-mounted computers.
F-91W-1XY
Casio F-91W: more than 100 million
Casio apparently bangs out more than three million of these £15 beaters every year, which would put the total number in circulation at more than 100m. Beloved – or, at least, worn – by everyone from school kids to terrorists (after 9/11, the F-91W wound up flagged by US security agencies as hinting at Al-Qaeda affiliation), it's many people's first taste of timekeeping, and is far hardier and more reliable than that price tag deserves.
Though the all-black F-91W is the most iconic, its success has encouraged Casio to experiment with everything from hot pink to our favourite, safety orange. Every serious watch collection needs at least one.
GA-2100-1AER
G-Shock: more than 100 million
We're putting the F-91W's stablemate below it in the rankings even though the Casio-owned brand celebrated manufacturing its 100 millionth watch in 2017. That's because that number, impressive though it is, represents every single G-Shock made since the brand's founding in 1983, from bubblegum Baby Gs up to its flagship MR-G's, which get into the mid-four figures. Still, it's a remarkable achievement for a line that's synonymous with toughness. But then, if stockbrokers can wear astronaut watches, we don't see why the rest of us can't wear a watch you can run over with your car.
Seiko 5 Sports
Seiko 5: tens of millions
There are so many watches under the Seiko 5 umbrella that this ranking feels a little unfair, but even if we limited ourselves to just, say, the OG Sportsmatic 5 – which was first released in 1963 – we're probably nudging up around seven figures. Seiko produces around five million watches a year these days, compared to 50 million movements, which is a dip from its early aughts heyday, when it was knocking out more than 350 million units annually (bear in mind, though, that the vast majority of its movements are sold to other brands).
Of those that aren't, a hefty chunk power Seiko 5s, which have long-been one of the best-value watches around; incredible build quality and an in-house automatic movement, for a fraction of the price some other brands charge for quartz. The 4R36, which powers most of the range, isn neither as elegant nor as technical as the guts you'll find in the watches made by Seiko's Grand sibling, but for those of us who value affordable, bombproof watchmaking, it's a work of art.
Swatch x Omega MoonSwatch: between four and five million units
There are probably all-time bigger sellers in the Swatch stable, depending on how you slice the numbers, but the success of the MoonSwatch is still staggering. When it launched, in March 2022, Morgan Stanley estimated it would sell half-a-million units. By November that year, Swatch Group revealed it had doubled that estimate. It then followed up with a slew of further variants throughout 2023, adding another two million units, despite the MoonSwatch only being available in-person, from select boutiques. Though 2024's figures were comparatively anaemic, the collaboration has still been a sales phenomenon.
Rolex Submariner: four million units
Like most watchmakers, Rolex has always been tight-lipped about what it makes, and how much money it makes from them. But estimates put recent annual production healthily above a million units per year, leading to revenues of more than CHF 10 billion. But in November last year, the Crown made the very unusual move of revealing some actual production data.
For a book celebrating 70 years of the Submariner, the brand confirmed production figures for every Submariner, Sea-Dweller and Deepsea, between 1953 and 2020. It adds up to four million watches, not taking the last four years into account, but we can probably add on around another 150,000 based on quantities for the most recent references. Presuming every single one of those watches was still in existence, the resale value (at November 2024 prices) was $46 billion. Although we assume that, were they all to hit the market at once, even Rolex's second-hand prices might dip a little.
Rolex Datejust
Rolex Datejust: more than four million units
It shouldn't take you much more than six months to get hold of a Datejust, unless the retailer really takes a dislike to you. Compared to the multiyear waitlists for models like the Submariner and Daytona, the Datejust is the attainable Rolex, for a (comparatively) light investment of time and money.
Though no one in the industry knows precisely how many there are, everyone in the industry knows that it's long been Rolex's best-seller. In the absence of hard numbers, and with an eight-year headstart on the Submariner, it's likely the world's best-selling luxury watch as well. Within the Datejust line-up, the most popular model is the Lady Datejust, which comes in almost 500 iterations, all the way down to 28mm.
Want more watch coverage? Get About Time, Esquire’s free newsletter devoted to the watch world, in your inbox every Sunday. Sign up here
You Might Also Like
