[blumentopf]

In German industry, there's plenty of angst that incumbents might be displaced by IT companies. E.g. Apple introduced their watch a bit more than a year ago and now they're dominating the smartwatch market, traditional swiss watchmakers can hardly get a foot in this space. So companies are trying to buy whatever they can afford in the hope of not ending up left behind. Porsche recently bought a stake in a parking app startup [1]. It all feels a bit like the dotcom era when so-called "old economy" companies frantically shelled out money to acquire "new economy" startups. Or like the stage shortly before the credit crunch in 2007 when dumb German Landesbanks piled subprime papers onto their balance sheet [2].

[1] http://www.intelligentmobilityinsight.com/news/ClB/Porsche-t...

[2] http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive...

[ethbro]

To be fair, Swiss watchmakers have a long tradition of sticking their head in the sand when innovation happens. cough Quartz.