You can look up the race, but the Swiss industries were also going for it. The Japanese were just first to get something to market and less attached to their existing industry.

At the time, there was a need for more accuracy. NASA is known for issuing Speedmasters, but the actual ships used Bulova tuning fork clocks. Electronic watches existed before quartz too, but when quartz was brought to market, it eventually took over.

The Swiss did want to make watches for the future, and they were moving a little slower, but they did make some very interesting quartz watches (look up the quartz and digital Omega Speedmaster models), but overall, they lost for a variety of reasons and had to fall back, regroup, close up the majority of watch making shops and lay off more than half the people working in the industry, and eek out what they could.

It is interesting. The Swiss were in the best position to develop new technology, but they were stuck with what they were good at.

It would have been an interesting time to be into watches. Imagine if tomorrow a new technology came out and started to take over the quartz market, and most watch makers who relied on quartz went out of business, and suddenly, G-Shock was making luxury digital watches exclusively and the stainless steel models were selling over retail if you could get your hands on one.

That is kind of what happened.