Look around you when walking on the streets - Out of 10 people, how many are wearing mechanical watches nowadays?
Smart phones/watches are not quartz watches (crisis)- they are competition from another level.
Industries that manufacture telephones, cameras, camcorders, calculators, dictionaries, voice recorders experienced this and perhaps laughed at the thought that a simple smartphone will put them out of business, but the smartphone won.
Mechanical watches are basically as useful as a gold chain/bracelet/jewelry nowadays but with more maintenance cost.
Swatch and AP probably trying to get the hype back from younger people to let them know the luxury watch segment exist outside of Rolex- out of which 10 you see outside maybe half are reps, but that's another topic another story
Swatch CEO probably call AP CEO 'hey bro, if you're not doing this, we're just going to get other brands to work on it, and some factories in China will probably be doing the same crap to your AP branding like fakes and unofficial collabs like Seiko Nautilus/BAPE Rolex but with AP not getting any cuts out of it'