Suunto have today confirmed their plans for the MOVESCOUNT platform over the next year or so.
As you can probably guess from the image to the right what we will see is a complete migration from MOVESCOUNT to the Suunto app.
The ‘new’ Suunto app was effectively launched alongside the Suunto 3 Fitness in April 2018. At the time, the 3 Fitness marked a new move for Suunto at a lower price point with innovative features and a new target audience in mind. The new naming convention of a single number ie ‘3’ then later heralded the Suunto 9 and, presumably there are more ‘numbers’ to follow next quarter or the quarter after (I don’t know that for sure but…I can count).
Back in early 2018, the new Suunto app also seemed very closely linked to the Sports Tracker app (NOT SportTracks) that Suunto also owns. Indeed those two were probably built on a common platform and it seems that this is the platform that best suits Suunto’s needs to take them forwards with the entire range.
Bye Bye Movescount
The MOVESCOUNT platform took me a while to get used to and, generally, I eventually liked it but if Suunto want to move on from that I have no personal issues in leaving MOVESCOUNT behind. I never did like the name but I did really like some of the innovative features like HEATMAPS – although perhaps that was the artistic side in me coming out when I drooled over images like this (London)
There will be many concerns for existing users about, for example, their historical data and about the retention of existing fuctionality. I can’t allay those fears myself but I’m sure there is someone at Suunto in charge of that. And there are links below to a more detailed look
2020
Today’s announcement says that Suunto Movescount will close down in the Summer of 2020 at the EARLIEST.
Precious historical MOVES (completed workouts) will be migrated.
Jan 2019
But that’s all a long way away. It’s further re-assuring to note that the Suunto app has, indeed, moved on over the last year and Suunto themselves note the addition of these features
- connection with key sports services – eg Strava
- customizable social sharing – choose what training data to share
- activity-specific heatmaps and route planning – Suunto 9 and Spartan
- sport mode customization – Suunto 9, Suunto 3 and Spartan
- basic compatibility for Ambit3 and Traverse, Traverse Alpha and EON Dive computers.
In fact, I was only just looking at the Suunto 9 on the Suunto app yesterday when I was playing around with SPORT MODE CUSTOMISATION and the addition of running power data fields for STRYD.
As you can see from the images from yesterday, below, there are some important messages about the implication of linking to the Suunto app if you still want to stay connected to MOVESCOUNT.
My advice to you? If it ain’t broke for you…don’t try and fix it by moving to the new app. stay with MOVESCOUNT for now and let everyone else sort out any new bugs on the app.
What Data Will be LOST in the Transfer
By ‘lost’ I mean ‘not transferred’ – my comments against each
- Personal information including body metrics – can easily and quickly be re-entered, I guess.
- Routes – gpx route import is now in beta and so you will be able to import your routes into the Suunto app.
- POIs – not sure about how you would transfer these.
- Suunto Movies – Doesn’t affect me but I imagine if it affects you then you will have to let them go.
- Groups you belong to – don’t know
- Events that you are attending – not important
- Training programs – We recently saw Suunto’s intent to link to Suunto Training plans on TrainingPeaks, so this area of functionality is going to get real-interesting, real-quick. I’m looking forwards to see how this area pans out.
- Suunto Apps for your watch created by the Movescount community – We’ve also seen the opening up recently of the possible ability to create new functionalities for Suunto.
- Device settings – Suunto’s standard (non-customisable) sports profiles still seem to all be there in the Suunto app. Re-creating new ones is a minor PITA but I do that every week with some device or other…welcome to my world 😉
ie Your MOVES will NOT be lost.
Where is the Future Focus?
This is a good question and the answer is clearly stated by Suunto to be Suunto 3 Fitness, Suunto 9 and Spartan Collection watches., Is AMBIT in that list….nope. But there is basic compatibility in the Suunto app for Ambit3, Traverse and Traverse Alpha Collection
Compatibility for Suunto 9/7/5/3/2/4/6/8/10 and Spartan covers this:
- synchronization of training data and ability to view and analyze workouts in Suunto app
- synchronization of 24/7 data such as steps, calories and sleep data
- enriching your trainings in Suunto app with images, videos and descriptions (old movies not transferred)
- ability to sync to sports services and other partners integrated to Suunto app
- social sharing of trainings
- notifications from your mobile phone on your watch (works well on Suunto 9 for me FWIW)
- route planning and sport mode customization
- watch GPS optimization
Take Out
What it looks like is happening is the work of Captain Obvious.
Namely that Suunto are focussing on current and future products and giving them a future platform to work in that is strategically more straightforwards to maintain. By that I mean that they seem to be moving away from trying to provide complex, post-workout analyses, apps and training plans. That never-ending ‘hard stuff’ looks to being effectively outsourced to existing 3rd party platform. Even Garmin do that to some degree (TrainingPeaks) so it absolutely makes sense for a company of Suunto’s size.
I guess CHANGE always creates uncertainty but CHANGE should also be for the better.
Suggestions to: Suunto App Forum
More: Suunto.com
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Hi mate! While I could understand your POV, I can’t agree totally with the way Suunto is doing things. Yesterday, they published that press release. There, they had got the opportunity to write whatever… But they chose to put what is on it. And just that, and I can figure they thank on it widely and slowly. So no errors can’t be found on it.
I mean:
A) We -users- must assume that workout deeply analysis capabilities (on a big screen computer, for example) and some features (as planned workouts, external apps -on Ambit3-) will disappear.
B) We must assume that Ambit2 support will be expired on 2020 (while TomTom, even after abandon sport market 2 years ago, still maintain their platform and gives support to their users). There is a possibility (not specified in the document) of giving users some kind of utility to export their workouts from their Ambit2 watches, but probably after a lot of shouting and tantrums from the users).
C) We must assume Suunto wants to give external services a way to sell their services using Suunto users data. This is a good thing, finally, because users could choose in the market for better, deeply or expertise services. But rivals (Garmin or Polar) still let you do that, but maintaining a good workout analysis (and workout comparison, and evolution stats, and fitness state) platform.
D) We must understand that Suunto will finish the platform migration on 2020, and the final platform is a “just mobile app” option. Nothing more, and nothing less. This is the state of the art of some other companies -of course-, like chinese brands (Xiaomi or Honor), or like not deeply involved in sport watch market. Certainly, not Garmin or Polar are following that way.
BTW, and IMHO, mobile platform won’t be in any way the place where I will deeply review my workouts, or prepare a detailed route. And, while Suunto App in that way is quite better than Movescount App (which is something that me, like others, doesn’t need at the end), it does not stop being a “SportsTracker” make-up with some vitamins. The real “core” and strong place of a training app is the analysis, and it’s not possible to do it hardly in a smartphone or tablet. I’m sorry, but a mouse and a big screen is totally necessary.
Would be possible that Suunto develops -in a future- a trustworthy and strong web platform? Possible yes, but they didn’t wrote in the paper about that. So, at this moment, this is not an option.
Outsourcing is great… and I agree with you… if you’re the only competitor in the square. But rivals have got strong, reliable and powered web platforms.
And, finally, to be honest, I would prefer a change like: developing a minimal mobile app (just to sync and check your workouts are uploaded) but having a strong and ready for “hard-stuff” web platform, even better if it’s based on progressive web development (like sporttracks.mobi, which is great and you could manage from any device).
a) that would be the assumption for now. but if there are links to tp, sporttracks, goldencheetah, etc they will better serve our analysis needs
c) garmin does not have good analysis. polar is btter than garmin but nowhere near the same as TP & co
d) 2020 at earliest. so will it be ‘just a mobile app’…i have no info to the contrary
yes and i agree with your subsequent points that many people will not do ‘depp’ reviews or analysis of their workouts.
I would ask you to consider one thing. First up I think I am very like you in what I NEED FOR ME. However there are lots of other different types of Suunto users out there who need the platform to support different needs…eg SOCIAL MEDIA…I have zero interest in that myself but for others it will be a MUST HAVE feature.
Right and agree…
Anyway, external services are extra payment services… services who each athlete must value if needed for himself or not. Rivals offers the service (probably a not profesional service but enough to make some deeply analysis for sure, and some better, some not so much better) for free (this is another discussion, you know). And external services totally free are -as you know too- payment services, where you pay with your data.
There is a great variety of athletes outhere, And companies have the option to try to take every profiles, most of them, or just a bunch of them. What is totally amazing is seeing a company -which is not the leader in the market- taking decisions which -obviously- will shorten their user market (as they are reducing, finally, their services offered to them). Probably there are good reasons for this movements that I can’t touch nor understand at all. But… well… let’s see what happen.
golden cheetah is totally free with total data ownership of the individual.
sporttracks desktop is extremely low once-only cost.
strava is free
Basic TP is free
etc
Premium TP is not free 😉
Yes Suunto is not an OVERALL market leader, they may well be a leader in certain market segments.
Yes Suunto APPEAR to be reducing services BUT at the same time they appear to be introducing openness and connectivity. That will gain back those services and maybe new competencies too.
Reasons: As I said they are small compared to Garmin. They need to focus. Outsourcing focuses to a degree.
I’m with you on this one. I’m upgrading my watch soon and I’ve been keeping on eye on what Suunto are doing. I like where they’re headed, which is exposing an API to let partners digest and analyse that data. Because they’re going to do it better than Suunto could and it allows Suunto to direct time and resources towards expanding their API, partners and hardening their watches core feature set.
Good software engineers are hard to come by and (bloody) expensive, so it seems like a waste for them to try and have a do-it-all platform when they’re a small company.
yup.
I lost a whole bunch of data from 2018 when moving across, too difficult to isolate which entries and I suppose it’s all on Strava if I needed the history. An inconvenience nonetheless.