As my signature says... New Panerai? Please thats so 2006! I guess its one of those things, you jump on the wagon, go over board and then fall off - some expand into other things such as vintage models while most just move onto new brands. It's just the way it seems to work and has done for a while.. There are always the die hard fans in every camp be it the Rolex fans or the IWC fans.
The current 'on-trend' darling does seem to be Hublot... black Hublot's it seems - again not to everyone's taste's and can't say I see the point having done the whole PVD PAM thing after the normal PAM's were everywhere and wanting something different.. its just the way the hobby works but I guess. IWC had this too with the top gun.
I guess if Panerai does something for you, you don't need to worry about whats 'popular' just go for it, if it doesn't there's plenty of other brands to choose from - we're just lucky we can the most of our watch fetish's thanks to the amazing reps available to us sampling from every tray as it were without the damage to our pockets.