Luxury Portable Consumer Electronics in Mexico

2021 DEVELOPMENTS

COVID-19 crisis enhances consumers’ digital engagement

Luxury portable consumer electronics consists almost exclusively of luxury wearables in Mexico. These products appeared in the country in 2017 and have enjoyed strong growth ever since.

COVID-19 sharpens focus on fitness

Health and wellness has been a key consumer trend across many product areas around the world for a number of years, and has been notably gaining in relevance in Mexico in recent times. The COVID-19 crisis has seen the rise in consumer health-awareness accelerate significantly both because of the immediate threat of COVID-19 and the potential impacts of the sedentary lifestyles and poor diets associated with lockdowns.

E-commerce gains

As in other categories, luxury portable consumer electronics has seen sales through e-commerce grow during the COVID-19 crisis thanks to the closure of physical stores as part of measures introduced to limit the spread of the disease, as well as new restrictions for people aged 65 years and over, pregnant women and children, which affected sales through physical channels but helped to increase online sales. While e-commerce is a very important channel for wearables, it can be difficult to sell expensive products online because the channel can struggle to offer a pleasurable experience of exclusivity comparable to that of brick-and-mortar outlets.

PROSPECTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Luxury wearables to remain key driver

Luxury wearables will remain the driving category in luxury portable consumer electronics during the forecast period, with luxury mobile phones remaining negligible in Mexico for much the same reasons as witnessed prior to the health crisis. Even status-conscious consumers tend to be focused on the technological aspects of smartphones rather than more aesthetic factors, with demand weighted towards manufacturers and brands with a strong technological positioning, such as Apple.

Growing focus on wearables targeting health and fitness trend

Luxury brands were already beginning to explore portable consumer electronics as digital technologies increasingly undermined the functional relevance of products such as writing instruments and timepieces. The health and wellness trend, in combination with the move towards the quantification of the self (the trend of tracking one’s life) driven by the ready availability and portability of digital technologies, has provided further motivation for luxury brands to develop portable consumer electronics.

Increasingly segmented offer

With the increasing consumer interest in health and fitness evolving, smart wearables are becoming more focused on the needs of particular consumers and activities. As timepiece brand, Tag Heuer, addresses the fact that smartphones have rendered traditional watches largely redundant in purely functional terms, it is moving into products such as the Tag Heuer Golf 2020 Edition.