Agreed but I addressed that above. It doesn’t matter if their publicly stated and primary objective is to grow the user base if the actual result of that is it that it also kills competition.
It’s all hypothetical at this point, but I find it hard to believe that if they do find themselves suddenly being a dominant player in the market that they aren’t at a minimum going to start resuming their plans to offer or partner to provide premium trainers with higher profit margins. Why wouldn’t they if the opportunity was clearly there. If that did play out, it’d basically have manifested the classic predation and recoupment stages of predatory pricing, a monopolistic practice from econ 101.
I don’t think this is their actual evil plan, my whole point is I don’t care about intent if the end result is the same.
Have they?
I admit I have never even launched Zwift, but every time I see it in my LBS the graphics seems to date from 2010ish and they haven’t seem to have expanded much in terms of ideas. Ditto for monetization of their existing user base.
I want to circle back to Wahoo and their digital subscription efforts: my point is that even the most popular and populous platforms (i. e. Strava, Peloton and Zwift) still struggle with long-term viability. So Wahoo who could at best hope to be a solid #5 (after TR) did not stand a good chance. One big relevant difference is that the first four platforms (Strava–TR) are platform agnostic and — with the exception of Zwift now — do not make their own hardware. Zwift’s recent moves are starting to muddy the waters.
But I think other hardware makers like Elite and Tacx have no incentive to make sure their products work well with Wahoo’s subscription service.
Depends on your ride. For newer routes or very long rides, I’d definitely want my phone in my pocket. But I don’t think I would need my phone if I were on one of my standard loops, and I just wanted to have a phone with me in case I get into an accident or keep in touch with my spouse.
Can anyone tell me what real-life battery life is with non-Apple smart watches that have LTE call and texting capability?
I see Suunto as proof that Garmin needs to be worried. Suunto had incredible hardware that was always wildly tempered by mediocre software, either on the phone itself (buggy, slow, limited) or on the phone/web (terrible syncing, unreliable or very lacking web app vs. Garmin.). I tried so hard to love Suunto for so long, but they always bit me for it.
In the Garmin v. Apple, I see Garmin as Suunto, potentially, long term. Great hardware, but relative to the engineering prowess of Apple, how long will their advantage last?
Zwift literally is a metaverse, within the context of the non-capital-M metaverse. A metaverse is the blended intersection where our physical lives interact with our connected lives. Peloton is also a metaverse. We’re at home, alone, but with having a live shared experience with tens of thousands of others in real time. Without diving too deep off track, the Second Life-esque experince that Meta’s Metaverse currently offers is pretty funny, yes, but the same people who mock that experience often partake in metaverse-adjacent experiences quite often. But I work literally a stone’s throw away from where the Metaverse is being made, so it’s possible I’ve had some of the KoolAid.
[subject change]
I think a lot of people here are seeing things a bit backwards. I don’t think Apple looks at the market share of Garmin and says, “We want to capture that.” I see Apple looking at the whole population and saying, “How many of these people might do activities?” And then they build out support to make it great for them. Their goal is to make a product so good that the whole population never even asks the question, “Is there a better watch for cycling, now that I’ve started taking it seriously.” They capture the middle 80, and then make it so that middle 80 never becomes the fringe 10 who (at present) decide to buy a Garmin. I don’t think they’re trying to convince anyone to give up their 945 for a Watch; they’re trying to get the Watch user to realize that’s all they’ll ever need (if only they’ll buy one.) Wahoo et al are chasing an increasingly shrinking fringe, and that means eventually, there might not be enough to go around.
To show that it was a bad idea to enter that business, even the (relatively speaking) titans are struggling with profitability. IMHO that’s relevant context to judge Wahoo’s decision.
Strava is relevant if you want to think of different business models to monetize athletes and sports.
From the four services I have listed, none competes head-to-head with another, but there are similarities (other than that they cater to athletes). Strava, Peloton and Zwift share a social component, whereas TR does not. (Not sure about Sufferfest, from what I gather it is closer to TR in this respect.) TR and Sufferfest cater to “serious” athletes, whereas Zwift and Peloton want to cater to a bigger audience. Yes, many serious athletes use Zwift, but Zwift’s aim is to appeal to a broader audience.
I don’t want to sidetrack the discussion too much. My point merely was that even the biggest subscription services (apart from possibly TR, which operates, I think, on a smaller scale than them) are struggling with profitability.
Before Apple released running power and tri transitions, I would have probably agreed with you here. But tri transitions is so specific that it only makes sense if support for power meters is in the works — how many triathletes do you know who don’t have a power meter? However, the Apple Watch has always been very good at tracking athletes while swimming and has caught up with most sports-orientated smart watches when it comes to running.
In addition, @dcrainmaker who is in the know, stated repeatedly that Apple is dead serious about getting into sports, and that Garmin should be concerned. I trust he knows what he is talking about. This is a snipped from the conclusion of Ray’s Apple Watch Ultra review (emphasis mine):
Now that doesn’t mean Apple has the features to back that up. But power meter support is a software feature, all you need is Bluetooth support, which all Apple Watches have had. That can be pushed with a simple software update. (Ideally, you’d want Ant+, too, but I don’t think there is a power meter on the market that only supports Ant+, but not Bluetooth.)
To bring that back to Wahoo and Garmin et al., even if at the time Wahoo did not know whether Apple would enter the “serious sports watches” market, they should have at least considered the case of Apple entering and the likelihood. Even without Apple, the market is quite crowded with good options. Garmin, Polar and Suntoo make good products — not perfect, but certainly very good.
Garmin succeeded where Suunto failed. Agree that Garmin should feel threatened by Apple for the personal devices space. My point is that I wouldn’t right off Garmin just yet. I’m an Apple fanboy, but my Apple Watch is in a drawer and I wear my Garmin Fenix 7 constantly. I actually find the Garmin health features presented better, where Apple is form over function, with pretty but not, for me, intuitive graphics.
Judging from their product releases, Garmin has started reacting to the threat of Apple entering the serious sports market 1–2 years ago. They de-emphasized general smartness (knowing they couldn’t beat Apple here) and focussed on making it a better sports watch. They are trying to add things like payments and music, but I don’t know where they are. My prediction is that Garmin will be the king of a smaller hill in a few years. If you need >3,- 4-day battery life or some really specific feature, they might still be your best choice.
One canary to look out for is whether Garmin, Polar and all the others roll out things like payment support, music and LTE to their entire line-up. I expect these will become expected features in the future. Payments and LTE are really useful in everyday life.
Totally agreed. And Wahoo tried to compete with Garmin one-on-one, despite their head start of what, 10, 15 years?
The other thing Garmin can use is that Apple is often not first, but often very good-to-best. E. g. their sleep phase analysis seems to be very, very good. But Garmin already processes HRV data and gives you suggestions to adapt your training accordingly. Apple won’t have that for quite some time (at least not first-party).
Yes, but then I would expect to see a Garmin app on your Apple Watch that does most of what Garmin’s smart watches would do. I reckon that this is Garmin’s Plan B, which is currently kept under glass with a hammer hanging next to it.
Personally, I think Garmin has made a lot of good moves. From all I hear and see, they are more the Microsoft/Android, i. e. usually not first to many features, but they are relentless in addressing their weaknesses. That’s why even if against all my expectations, their sports watch business unit goes belly up, I’m not worried about them.
This!
This is the kind of market where healthy companies will often take the opportunity to clean house because if you cut 15% when everybody else is cutting 30%, you look like the strong horse, there’s no real negative market perception and your financial position gets stronger.
If I were Garmin, I’d probably ask to what degree the hardware is commoditized. You see this with gaming consoles, the PS5 and the current-gen XBox use very similar hardware with very similar performance. If you can make your game work well on one, it will very likely run well on the other platform. Sony and Microsoft fight commoditization with software deals (exclusives and timed exclusives).
If I were Garmin and the market had reached this stage, I’d probably start talking about breaking the glass. You won’t build better hardware than Apple for cheaper prices. Just the economies of scale are on Apple’s side.
Oh I absolutely believe Apple wants every single serious athlete. Unquestionably. But I think they do that by making a watch that has running tracking. And then cycling tracking. And then swim tracking. And then better running tracking. Better HR. Better lap details. Then power. Then stroke identification. Then stroke analysis. Then stroke optimization. They look at what the middle needs, then add resolution and resolution and resolution, until all of a sudden, people who would have never considered an AWatch are looking at two devices that cost the same and asking themselves not “Does the Apple watch do everything I need as a serious athlete” but “Why would I buy a Garmin when it only does the sports things?”
Exactly. In my analogy, Suunto:Garmin what Garmin:Apple.
I think this is pretty spot on. They saw the appeal of the Smart watch teritory and thought, “Hey, that’s a huge pie we can eat from.” But then they realized the king of that pie was untouchable. I am not writing off Garmin; there’s always market for a highly specialized niche manufacturer. I think Garmin will end up the king of a small, specialized hill.
If Apple has 100 units and takes another 1, good for it. If Wahoo, Garmin, Hammerhead, Suunto, and Polar collectively share two units and Apple takes one, very bad for them.
Are running power and tri transitions something “the middle” needs? I’d argue no. Especially tri transitions is a niche-of-a-niche feature, and according to @dcrainmaker, they have nailed it.
Them launching automatic tri transitions changed my mind about what their aims are, I was previously in your camp. I don’t think they are aiming for the middle 80 %, I think they are aiming for the “middle 90–95 %”. While you could argue that isn’t that much of a difference for Apple, if successful, it would cut Garmin’s (and Polar’s, etc.) addressable market in half. That likely means that of Garmin, Wahoo, Suntoo, Polar and a few others I am forgetting, several of these will exit the market — either by choice or by market force.
Just to re-iterate: I am not arguing from the perspective of an Apple fanboi (I don’t own any smartwatch, just two “analog” watches). My point is that if I had been at the top of Wahoo, this would have been a major concern. And I think Garmin’s product releases are consistent with them reacting to that in advance: they have released more expensive models with features that are more niche (such as super long battery life), and add software features earlier than Apple (e. g. running power and HRV).
The middle (of any market) likes to think it needs a lot. I’d argue that the vast majority of runners (not triathletes) could be served by a Garmin Forerunner 10:
^Ha, Garmin previews a 35 because the 10 is discontinued. I stand by my argument for the 10.
Pace, distance, and time. What more do you truly need?
When I speak of middle, I speak of, “What do people want.” They want a bunch of capability. I also am viewing this from the perspective of “People who want to engage in sports.” I think Apple first targets the middle 60. What is enough to make the majority of people happy? They don’t go into a space and target the fringe power users. But over time, they make their products better and better and better to where those fringes are actually going to start looking and saying “Hey, this might be good enough for me.”
I actually suspect we basically 100% agree, I think we’re just saying things in different ways. I don’t disagree with almost anything you wrote.
