Pioneer Announces Transfer of Cycle Sports Business

Shimano is potentially back in the bike head unit market with the acquisition of what looks to be Pioneer’s entire bicycling components business (assets).

As the press release says:

 

Pioneer Announces Transfer of Cycle Sports Business

Pioneer Corporation announced today that it has signed an agreement to transfer certain assets of its Cycle Sports business to Shimano, Inc. (“Shimano”), a leading manufacturer of bicycle components globally.

Through this agreement, Pioneer will transfer the assets of these technologies and conclude its related operations. Sales by Pioneer of pedaling monitors, cycle computers, and other related products will cease by the end of March 2020.

Shimano plans to develop products, web services, and applications using the Pioneer Cycle Sports assets and make Shimano services available to customers who currently use Pioneer’s Cyclo-Sphere web services, PC tool, and smartphone applications. Cyclo-Sphere will continue to be available to consumers until Shimano’s services are introduced.

Pioneer will continue to accept customer inquiries about cycle products and services and provide repair services on Pioneer Cycle Sports products sold prior to the asset transfer per the terms of any applicable product warranties.

Background
Pioneer Cycle Sports developed and introduced the world’s first pedaling monitor, cycle computers and web services (Cyclo-Sphere) for cyclists in 2013. At present, the product’s third generation has been developed and is used by many cyclists.

Shimano’s bicycle components are highly regarded and equipped by many cycle athletes. As a result, a significant portion of the Pioneer Cycle Sports product portfolio has been designed to be specifically compatible with or sold pre-installed on Shimano components. The transfer of the Cycle Sports technology to Shimano will incorporate Pioneer’s strength in electronics and IT technologies, enhancing the functions of Shimano products and services and achieving the aspiration of Pioneer to contribute to a wider range of customers.

via: dcrainmaker.com, and more there as well

This might mean that Shimano will abandon the integrated way the R9100P is constructed in favour of developments to the Pioneer PM. I’d say there was a good chance of that being the forward thrust of things, indeed I discussed Shimano’s future PMs, in part, here some time ago.

When it comes to bike computers, aka Bike Head Units, you have to say that the market is already littered with models that sell in very small numbers with even more to follow this year. So will Shimano rebrand the CA600? bin it? sell it off? or use it as a base to improve it? IDK, I’ve not used one but it looks good from the spec but I reckon they’ll bin it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, powermetercity have Pioneer stuff on sale right now…here, including the SGX-CA500 bike computer at a very good price of $99.99.

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