How Garmin Built Its Own Fitness Empire—and Why It’s Still Missing the Big Picture
So, let me ask: how many of your fitness devices, apps, and accessories are Garmin? Go ahead and think about it. In a world where we have more choices than ever for tracking health and performance, Garmin’s ecosystem makes sure its products are front and centre in our sporting minds. But how did Garmin do it? How did they manage to create a “must-have” lineup of sports devices that tie you into their ecosystem one step at a time? And, more importantly, why will that business model FAIL in the not-too-distant future…let’s see.
Garmin’s lineup is impressive—from the all-in-one Fenix and Forerunner watches to elite bike computers like the Edge 1050, heart rate straps, and its Garmin Connect app. This isn’t just about selling you one more device or another fitness subscription. This is a carefully engineered ecosystem. And there may be more on the horizon—rumours of new Garmin smart rings, maybe a display-free fitness band. But here’s the catch: unlike Apple, Google, and Samsung, Garmin doesn’t own the essential parts of the tech stack you use daily, like your smartphone or computer. And as powerful as the Garmin ecosystem is, this missing control over its users’ core tech devices makes Garmin’s ecosystem feel… incomplete.
To understand Garmin’s challenge, though, we first need to understand how they got here. Garmin’s breakthrough wasn’t one product; it was GPS technology. And it started long before “connected” fitness was even a thing. Garmin was building products for aviation, marine, and outdoor sports that were as rugged as they were reliable. GPS was Garmin’s iPhone, and its Gmail was a technology that did one thing so much better than the competition that it was practically essential. Once Garmin excelled in the GPS market, it expanded, introducing devices for running, cycling, diving, and almost anything that required sports tracking or navigation.
But the real magic of Garmin’s ecosystem is how each device links to the others. You could pick up a Garmin watch to track your running, and if you have a Garmin bike computer, they sync perfectly to Connect and update complex fitness parameters. You can see your running, cycling, and fitness data all in one app, Garmin Connect. In a world where you’re tracking dozens of sports data points, Garmin’s ecosystem “just works” (well, at least with other Garmin devices). But if you try to break out of it or mix and match with other tech brands, that seamless experience sometimes crumbles. Sure, you can easily link other physical sports products using industry-standard connections, and you can export sports data and routes from Garmin Connect to and from other fitness platforms, but there are limitations. For serious adventurers and endurance athletes, this partially closed nature of the system actually limits Garmin’s true potential – you can’t easily use the maps you want, and you can’t use the precise product format you might want – Oura Ring, Ultrahuman Air, Circular Ring or RingConn.
So, what’s Garmin missing? The rest of the tech ecosystem. Unlike Apple or Google, Garmin doesn’t control the devices where users increasingly interact with their fitness data – strava, training peaks, zwift, detailed HRV insights, and other kinds of sleep tracking. Your phone, tablet, or laptop? Not Garmin. Instead, it relies on iOS, Mac, Windows and Android to power Garmin Connect, Garmin Explore, and other fitness-related apps. Apple and Google can integrate across all their own devices relatively effortlessly; Garmin can’t.
And as Garmin tries to expand into new territory—like a rumoured Garmin smart ring, a bike aero/drag sensor, or a display-free fitness tracker similar to Whoop—it’s facing an even more significant ecosystem disadvantage. Imagine the smart ring: it could provide continuous heart rate and sleep tracking in a user-friendly format, working with other Garmin devices to enhance your health insights. But then what? The data would still need to go through your phone, your Apple or Android device, creating another barrier to that “magical” experience tech companies aim for. Garmin can build more products, sure, but without owning the OS on your phone or computer, Garmin’s ecosystem can only go so far. And so far, that hasn’t been too much of a problem, but things are about to change.
Technology has an old rule: over time, standards get complicated as the bureaucracy around them increases. USB-C and Wi-Fi—they both started simple, but now they’re fragmented with confusing specs and limited compatibility. Garmin’s ecosystem works similarly. You can add more Garmin products, but when it’s time to sync or share across non-Garmin tech, compatibility breaks down – you have to wait for that 3rd party ciq developer to make their app work, you have to wait for that other platform to tweak the data integrations, and you have to use Stryd‘s PowerCentre for the best running power experience. Apple and Google own this space and provide a one-stop ecosystem that “just works” across every device. Garmin’s ecosystem is very strong but stops short of being complete, creating extra steps and small frustrations for users who need to work outside Garmin Connect.
What’s next?
What’s next for Garmin’s ecosystem? With AI-driven health features coming to market with the likes of Whoop Coach and AI Endurance, Garmin has a lot of data about you—metrics from your runs, rides, workouts, and more but its insights like Readines and daily workout suggestions are rules-based…not truly AI-based. Yet, unlike Apple Health or Google Fit, Garmin’s data remains siloed, and Garmin predetermines insights…not you. Apple and Google are racing to leverage AI in new ways, like personal health insights powered by Apple’s Siri/Apple Intelligence or Google’s Gemini, to give proactive health advice based on multiple data points. Garmin’s devices collect tons of health data, but without deeper integration into the broader tech ecosystem, these insights are mostly limited to charts and stats rather than actionable advice guided by emerging science. Garmin’s next evolution will need more than just rugged, accurate and usable hardware—it will require enhanced partnerships with, or ownership of, the data that powers your day-to-day life, the science around sports and wellness, and AI to integrate it and present it to you meaningfully in new ways.
More: Garmin Future Models
So, as we move into a world of more wearable tech—Garmin’s speciality—it’s worth asking if their ecosystem can keep up with deeper and personalised fitness insights and the changing ways we are only just starting to interact with our wider personal tech ecosystems. Garmin’s focus on athletes, adventurers, and outdoor enthusiasts has led to the best-in-class hardware for GPS and tracking, but it’s increasingly fighting with Apple and others to own the space where you consume this data. And without owning the phones, laptops, large language models, and other key components to the overall tech mix that matters most in day-to-day life, Garmin’s ecosystem feels more like a collection of accessories and platforms glued together than a complete, personalised sports and wellness partner.
Garmin’s reactions?
Garmin has been historically good about not walling its ecosystem too heavily. Once AI encourages you to learn more about your fitness and wellness outside of Garmin Connect, the company will likely become restrictive about access to your data in its ecosystem. Once the walls are strengthened, it simply won’t have the resources within Connect to provide all the insights Google, Apple, and the like have in abundance.
Of course, Garmin, like Whoop, could partner with chatGPT for coaching. However, that one example of a solution increases its dependence on external resources and will come at an ever-increasing price.
Other Factors
Every empire will fail eventually, and few businesses will have generational pedigrees.
That is a statement of the obvious; ask the Romans. What’s not obvious is how and when they will fail.
Deglobalisaion
Significant shifts are occurring now in the globalised economy. Whatever you might think, it is deglobalising, and conflicts are increasing. The supply chains required to make a watch like Garmin Fenix are highly complex; it would be impossible to make a Fenix in the USA solely from North American components and materials. So, what happens to Garmin in a regionalised world?
An unstable and insecure China
There are significant structural failures in the Chinese economy. One reasonably likely outcome is that China seeks to secure its geographic sphere of influence. The first step to doing that is to bring Taiwan back under the control of the CCP. Garmin is heavily based in Taiwan. What would happen to Garmin if China invaded Taiwan next year?
Rise of the smartwatch trumps the smartification of the sports watch
Every year, smartwatches become better sports watches. It’s obvious. Look at people’s wrists; for example, you see more adorned with Apple Watch Ultra. No one will climb Everest wearing a Watch Ultra, but not many people climb mountains. Many people have weekend adventures and play sports and are starting to choose smartwatches and the apps and maps on their smartphones, whereas previously, they would have chosen Garmin. At the same time, sports watches like Garmin have become better at using smart features; however, they will never be fully integrated with Apple’s smart features.
Legislation only chips away at the technical barriers rather than dismantling them. By the time legislation dismantles one barrier, two or three others evolve to take its place – Apple, Google, and Samsung actively built these barriers.
Rise of competent Asian competition
Cheaper competitors are becoming competent. Look at the Amazfit T-Rex 3. It’s not as good as a Garmin Fenix. But it’s not a million miles away, so in 1-3 years, could it be good enough to capture larger proportions of the sales of adventure watches that would have previously defaulted to a Fenix? What about 5 years? 10 years? Are you sure?
No more features to add
One of the reasons for Garmin’s success has been to include large numbers of sports features directly and indirectly via CIQ. Garmin is a safe bet if you need or want niche features out of the box. However, Suunto and Apple are catching up, albeit in different ways. Fenix 8 was a new model, but did it add any important sports features? Are there major sports feature sets still to be added, and is the competition closing in?
A tale that was obvious with hindsight
Garmin Fenix is now a rebranded Epix. I wrote several articles a few years ago, including one in 2022, stating that Garmin Fenix is dead. Some people ridiculed the article, saying that ‘proper’ adventurers always want a MIP screen and Uber-long battery life. Yet, since then, the sports watch market has quickly transformed to focus on AMOLED screens. Why? A simplistic view is that most people like pretty screens. That’s where the adventurers got it wrong; they assumed everyone else shared the same needs and wants. Many adventurers still buy a traditional Fenix of course, but in insufficient numbers to keep the Garmin behemoth going.
Take Out
These are some of the future trends and risks I think will broadly pan out, as I suggest, but my arguments may have flaws.
Either way, I’m not selling my Garmin kit any time soon!
What do you think will happen?
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Interesting never thought of this but I seen this before in other industries where a company had to switch once something got block for some of it users.
Happy training
You missed it. Garmin DOES NOT need the iphone or iOS. Garmin is way ahead of you. Shortly, many devices with leverage wi-fi but more importantly direct satelite communications to use the internet and AI. Garmin is essentially already there with the latest upgrade to packet transfer on InReach that allows large data tranfers. Everybody had wondered why Garmin is not implementing more cell tech into thier watches. The truth, they don’t need or want it. Why rely on cell coverage when you have global sat data transfer. Garmin will be fine and light years ahead of Google.
I was about to say the same thing. Garmin doesn’t need full integration with the phone because they’re not looking to replace it. They’ve already got an interface with the user via the watches or bike computers screen.
Apple (and it’s only Apple) are walling off every other competitor by keeping iMessage to Apple Watch only, but that’s by no means a deal breaker as almost all of us are using WhatsApp, Insta Chat and FB Messenger anyhow. These will all eventually come to LTE connected Garmin watches as soon as they’ve got voice to text functionality and that’s something they’re actively working on at the moment (the new NXP processor has an NPU which supports it)
Perhaps most customers are looking for something to integrate and complement their smartphone? Fro example the emergency satellite abilities of the iPhone and other phones might seriously impact the broad need for inReach 9then the argument comes back to the small number of people who would then NEED it)
Garmin can’t get full integration and can’t replace the smartphone, there’s only so much you can do on a watch screen and only so much the Watch can do internally.
Take Apple as an example, what can’t it EVER realistically do that garmin currently does; and then how big is the market for that compared to the overall market?
Long term survival is about market share.
> Garmin can’t get full integration and can’t replace the smartphone, there’s only so much you can do on a watch screen and only so much the Watch can do internally.
I’m going to disagree on that. A watch or ring which is directly connected to your body can measure far more health metrics than a phone. In future there is the possibility of blood sugar, blood pressure, sweat analysis and a whole other raft of movement metrics which could feed into algorithms which would then give real-time feedback to the user. The watch is also on your wrist hence it’s in a prime place for alerting the user if anything, needs their their immediate attention.
The one place though that Garmin May struggle is if Apple or Google deny Garmin access to their various Health APIs which some medical test facilities (eg blood tests) have started publishing too. Garmin may need to do a little bit of work in future to ensure that such test results can be published to their own health platform as well has Apple will absolutely try and wall them off in this area given the opportunity.
I think we are perhaps looking at this differently.
I certainly agree that a watch/ring is a key place to measure body physiology (despite limitations)
Processing, presentation, certain aspects of connectivity and integration logically happen on the smartphone for the foreseeable future.
the smartphone is not going anywhere for several more years yet (eventually ie super longterm it will go as a product format)
My guesd is the first step will be a watch with integrated InReach tech coming in the next two to three years.
afaik the aerial required for satellite reception will be too large for the watch format in the near future. Plus there will likely be a subsciption cost linked to that or substantial additional cost for Garmin to run its services over for ‘millions’ of watches
Too big and bulky? Huawei are already doing it.
obviously iPhone has done the satellite messaging thing for a year or so.
Huawei does a satellite calling smartphone (Huawei Mate 60 Pro, 2023)
Huawei Mate 50 series and Huawei Watch Ultimate claim to have Beidou (China)-based, two-way SMS messaging (not data, not voice). I can’t seem to find if that is actually directly from the watch or via the smartphone.
The antenna can be integrated into strap, so that’s not a huge concern. The real concern is the battery has any inReach integration on the watch could realistically only be used for SOS only. He doesn’t have the battery capacity to ping a satellite every hour to check for messages.
Most people who are going into back country have their phone with them or in inreach anyway. It’s not like you’d go out there with a watch and nothing else. I really don’t think it’s that much of a selling point.
The antenna COULD be integrated intot he strap but I doubt Garmin will do that. At least not for quite some time.
Agreed on the ‘people going into the backcountry with phones or inReach’ point.
Any news about Instinct 3 release date? Just asking.
Any news about Instinct 3 release date? Just asking.
You’ll be the first to know
I don’t see the relevance of this article. No other serious fitness watch brand owns an OS or interaction device except apple which IMHO doesn’t compete with Garmin, shunto, coros, or any other serious fitness brand, because the apple watch doesn’t have the battery capacity needed to be anything other than a daily recharge device that you will absolutely have to take off your wrist the moment you finish your exercise because it needs charging to remain useful. Also IMHO no serious athlete is using an apple watch to track their performance metrics as they would with any of the other aforementioned brands. Having seamless connection between my Garmin data and my phone/computer is fine, and frankly is par for the course regardless of your fitness device
Apple and eventually Google/Samsung own the OS, the same would be kinda true of some of the peripheral smartphone OS systems like maybe Huawei (that I don’t know much about)
like you I am a serious athelte. and probably like you I need/want a serious sports watch. How many serious athletes are there/ and what proportion of Garmin’s customers are serious atheltes? do we really need a Garmin – look at the Olympians who wear a Whoop or Apple Watch (maybe the former are sponsored?). Some of my best atheltic performances from the glory days only used a basic analog watch or basic Polar with HRM chest strap. How many ITU triathletes use Garmin on race day? (check the olympics video streams for Paris to see)
I think you’re looking at it wrong. Garmin isn’t competing against Apple or Samsung. It’s like saying Nikon is competing with Apple because they both take pictures. Nikon doesn’t have a computer or phone to edit the pictures, so you’ll always depend on another device. They’re different markets. Garmin makes specialized devices at a premium for those who need that.
Just like Primark isn’t competing against Balenciaga, or Red Bull against Coke. Just because motorbikes exist, doesn’t stop people cycling. (I can go on… But I think you get the point)
I think we shall have to agree to disagree.
Nikon absolutely does compete with Apple. Camera manufacturers have been decimated buy smartphones.
Apple absolutely does compete with Garmin and vice versa. A simple recent example is how Ultra/Fenix have added dive capabilities.
Fitness is also just one small piece of their ecosystem.
Look closely at their marine, aircraft, handheld and automotive hardware, and Garmin looks very solid. I doubt they worry about Apple/Google taking over aeronautical and marine navigation
here are Garmin’s (Excellent) Q2 results: https://the5krunner.com/2024/08/01/garmin-growth-continues-q2-2024-results-show-stall-in-the-fenix-group-outdoor/
fitness and outdoor have an existential importance to Garmin
I don’t get the point of this article. The nexus of the Garmin ecosystem is Garmin Connect. The app is improving and will only get better. Third party products will be accommodated only if there is a business case for Garmin. Google (Android) and Apple would be foolish to piss off their users by making things difficult for Garmin.
yes Connect is improving.
will Garmin really integrate AI insights?
what happens when AI that is external to Conenct can give insights on your sports and wellness data? Woudl there then be a need for the structured approach from connect?
> will Garmin really integrate AI insights?
what happens when AI that is external to Conenct
Whatever AI implementation Garmin will use will of course be external to Connect. They’re not going to integrate a massive model into the app or even onto the watch.
What’s most likely is that your 24-Hour metric data and activities will be uploaded on a regular basis, processed by ai and recommendations sent back to the watch. Will likely see enhanced and very specific recommendations around sleep, diet, training recommendations and even some cool features like places that you might like to go for a run when you’re on holidays.
This is why the potential for LTE integration is so exciting because it doesn’t need a phone to be part of that equation. All of this can be back and forth between a Garmin watch and Garmin’s own APIs. And that’s exactly where Garmin want to be. They definitely do not want to be tied down to using the phone as a Gateway given how combative Apple have been.
Yes, But will the AI CONTROL come at Garmin’s end or the other end? If it’s done at the other end (say, by Apple Intelligence) that keeps you out of Garmin’s app/control
to entirely replace the watch to smartphone link with LTE is very difficult. there is a LOT to do there. LTE will only ever replace certain, smaller aspects of functionality at least for the next several years. Even if LTE could entirely replace the bluetooth link to your phone you would come up with the issue of what larger screen you would use to view things that can’t be viewed on a small watch. That’s where AR/VR and other home displays might come in at some point down the line. But that’s a couple of stops away…not the next one down the line.
My Enduro 3 has 36 days of battery life. More if I turned some things off. I don’t see another company competing. They also have no subscription fees to get health insights which I cannot ignore.
The problems I see are that their competitors are at feature parity with Firstbeat Analytics now and they may have run out of ideas. If they could do anything, it should be more investment in Daily Suggested Workouts that push you harder and find more ways to leverage sensor data.
Where they’re falling is their prices. I did a back of the napkin look at their pricing on the Fenix line and it feels like they should settle their prices down. The Fenix 8 is 37% more than the Fenix 7 at launch date which was like 23% more than the f5. I’ve bought the overpriced scale and bp cuff, I’m pretty locked in– but I’m probably going to hold onto this for a long time. If they want to compete with Google or Apple they could probably do trade-in programs or something if they want to retain people because it would be a fair to say Coros and Suunto are about as attractive to those who want battery and non-oled screens.
agreed, it’s hard to comepte with Garmin in the small market for people who need 36 days battery life! Less so for the much larger number of people who run marathons and local 5k events.
firstbeat: good point but I’d slightly disagree with you here. sports Physiology is one area where garmin remains ahead for the mass market and they’ve surpassed the abilities of Firstbeat after they bought them. i don’t think any competitor si really at the stage Garmin was a few years ago, perhaps from even before it acquired firstbeat. Some comapnies like Coros SEEM to be but it’s smoke and mirrors.
prices; another good point. Garmin absolutely has to maintain 50% margins for its shareholders. It can’t do that at the lower ends of the market so it is driven to product differentiate at the upper end of its product range either by specialisation or customisation (material qualities)
Fenix is the Garmin sub-brand for “status but still mainstream”: the high price is as much a feature as it is a bug. Not as much as with the Marq, but it’s already there. (Marq serves as a convenient distraction to make you not realize that you buy into veblen territory when your status good brain makes you) If you can’t or don’t want to buy a Fenix, there’s always the Forerunner at a far more competetive price.
I wouldn’t mind paying a subscription for more health centered features like whoop does. Garmin doesn’t need to be like apple and google but it should enhance their health features. For Gods sake even a $30 tracker has a smart alarm
One thing Garmin sucks is with data like Body Battery etc when you are using more devices. I use for running, climbing, ski mountaineering. rowing etc and all day use a Fenix 6X and for cycling a vivosmart 5 and a edge 840 or 1030. But there can just be one master for these data, and the Fenix is much to heavy for Mountainbiking, but else I dont have correct all day data (I like doing 7h rides 200-250km rides) and so I have no correct data for 1/3 of the day. Even the usage of a hrm pro 2 doesnt gets correct data for this.
Garmin should work on this stuff to enable correct 24h data for their users, or I do it wrong…
Garmin is a hardware company. Unless they learn how to create good software they’ll fall behind the competition. In the last few years the competition started to close the gap in HW while being at least as good as Garmin is in SW. In the last 2 years Garmin is struggling with software bugs. They’re not fixing bugs just adding more “features” that no user asked for, needs or will ever use, just for the marketing department to be able to add a few buzzwords to their leaflets
Bugs?…yes!: https://the5krunner.com/2024/10/01/garmin-fenix-8-astounding-number-of-bugs-so-far-fixed/
Incorrect algorithms? Yes: https://the5krunner.com/2024/10/23/garmin-race-predictor-still-wrong/
I would say however that Fenix 8 and Edge 1050 now have much improved interfaces (UIs). I’ve been able to say for many many years that the Garmin interfaces were awful (because they were/are) but I think we are at a turning point.
The “plethora of features” argument is a good one (I’ll add it in above), one reason for Garmin’s success has been that it is the only brand guaranteed to have the niche features that only you and a small number of other people want. Apple will ahve an app that can do it (but which one?) and Suunto now has a pretty decent range of third party ‘apps’
I’m totally agree with your comment !!!
🙂
There are some intetesting insights in this article but I think its a big assumption that Garmin will crumble.
The only reason it has to go through android or apple is because garmin don’t do smart phones, and the former control that market. Freestyle libre has to do the same thing, as much as other integrated technology that focus on their niche.
If you look at the share price of Garmin its been farely steady for years with progressive increase and minimal spiking. They are strong.
There are software challenges admittedly. As a software developer you learn to navigate the technology and integrate it. Its often a chore but not a barrier.
It’s amazing their data is free, with no subscription cost, compared to the likes of oura, whoop and others. I also think its healthy competition not to have a dominating monopoly.
No mention of windows phones either. 🫣
No mention of Blackberry either 😉
I’ve made a few tweaks to the article to address some points beyond pure tech.
The use of AI tools is only of any use if all of the data sets it’s based on is valid. We’re still some way from that being true. Even then there will be a slow acceptance of the tech. Strava has introduced a version of AI which is so basic that it’s pointless, it’s not providing any insights that I couldn’t have worked out myself. It’s the hardware that provides the validated data, not the software, so I don’t think Google is about to crumble anytime soon.
agreed about Strava.
Look at Whoop, its AI is claimed to be trained on your data and sports science.
AI and invalid datasets: that’s actually what I consider the elephant in the room AI use case. Garbage in is the one dominant problem of all training software today and spotting the implausible outliers should be a really, really easy use case for our not-intelligen-at-all machine learning pattern recognition algorithms commonly known as “AI”.
For now, one of the most important contributions of a human coach is taking some time to “proofread” incoming datasets and keeping the trash out of the formulas. I believe that once that is done, even algorithms that are hardly more than glorified excel formulas can be pretty awesome, at least compared to the garbage in/garbage out we currently see. “AI” will never be in a hurry or distracted when checking yet another boring ride for implausible outliers.
But, well, this kind of “AI” requires a somber look at what is needed, what would be helpful, and not just falling blindly in love with one’s ability to translate absurdly trivial comparisons into LLM prompts and calling it “AI” (yeah, Strava, who else do you think I’m looking at)
Yes that sort of data cleansing should be easy for AI.
Google could have it. But with it’s stupid split brain approach having Fitbit and Google Fit, forcing users install two or three apps, wear os full of bugs… They will never get it. They are obviously still just advertisement company.
Google could have it. But with it’s stupid split brain approach having Fitbit and Google Fit, forcing users install two or three apps, wear os full of bugs… They will never get it. They are obviously still just advertisement company.
agreed, for now.
things change…
I think there are some elements you haven’t thought of:
Garmin being platform agnostic is precisely why I choose Garmin.
The battery life on a Garmin device compared to e.g. an Apple Watch that lasts me at best 2,5 days, is precisely why I choose Garmin.
The way Garmin basically produce activity oriented sensors on a software platform that integrates and correlates all this data is a strong point.
And what Garmin doesn’t have in platform control it can make up for by integrating with other services.
The big problem with both Apple and Google wearables is that they’re very limited modelwise. So their devices have to be good at everything. Which makes for a relatively slow innovation cycle and experiences per activity that are not as strong as with Garmin.
Plus they can’t seem to nail the battery life part of the equation.
thank you
yes I’m aware of those points which positively affect me as a longstanding Garmin user
the battery life supremacy of Garmin is being (has been) eroded by the likes of Suunto, Coros and others. As you say, NOT eroded by Wear OS and watchOS based models
Connect and integration: the integration and ring fencing of Connect is and will change. it is critical for companies to keep us spending time in their apps. AI will change this.
Garmin has no magic battery or screen bullet that apple lack access to. It’s all about the design choices the companies make.
limited Apple/Google models: and yet the Apple Watch is the best selling smartwatch ever 🙂
Yes. But the Garmin watches aren’t smartwatches. They’re sensor devices with smartwatch features.
I don’t believe AI will change anything that Garmin can’t utilize in e.g. their coach. Plus it can expand to the areas surrounding the core training if they want to.
Coros is the only real challenger right now as I see it. They have great hardware and models to rival Garmin.
Suunto has only just launched a watch that could even begin to compete, but they lack the app and general platform acceptance from users, that Garmin has. But perhaps in the future.
thank you
from the customer perspective there are those who want smart features aonly; and those who want athletic sports watches. Their choices are more straightforward than those who want/need smart AND sports features.
I very strongly beleive that the middle ground of smart-sport watches is where the volume of slaes currently lies. smartwatches are becoming more sporty, and sports watches are becoming more smart. simplistically it’s easier for smart watches to get sportier as some can leverage more easily the tech stack (eg Apple with iOS). Compound that with people over-buying on features they don’t need (I’m talking about Jo Blogs not athletes) and the future points to smart watches taking over much (but definitely not all) of that middle ground. I’m not sure anyone will argue with the principle of that; tho they might argue with the magnitude of the effect.
Coros is a challenger as a sports watch, for sure. it has good products and it looks like another good one in a day or so’s time. Coros does have good hardware (beyond battery life) that rivals garmin in many respects but I think its watch software and ecosystem lags behind garmin when you dig under the skin. Add to that the financial considerations that its top end products don’t sell in volume and that it’s low end products are low margin (but do sell in some volume) then i don’t think that is a financially-sound strategic position to be in right now. still they have the future to play with and improve that position.
I politely disagree with what you say about Suunto who i believe has turned a corner over the last year or so. the app is pretty good now, i kinda like it as do other reviewers. it’s more recent produts are very good, i like race and race s…as do other reviewers. i like the look and now the speed/feel of the UI on the watch; and they have many apps in their app store. They have an interesting new owner and clearly are adding resources faster than the likes of Polar. But they are ultimately competing in the pseudo middle price braket for out-and-out sports/adventure watches which is a hard place to be as time passes. That said Suunto is in a decent position looking ahead but they can probabyl never rival Garmin who are orders of magnitude a larger company.
As a 15 plus year Garmin user unless they got greedy and tried charging a monthly fee like the other guys do, I’m solidly on the Garmin train. I don’t need my smartwatch to be the same as my phone. I always have my phone..
Yeah, this all feels like a reach. Like you’ve been asked to find reasons they may fail, rather than having any solid reasons for believing it’s likely. What’s the probability and impact against all of this? To what extent does it affect Garmin uniquely?
On the points raised:
– “Garmin doesn’t have complete control”, Yeah, but no tech company does. Apple comes closest with its closed ecosystem, Android second, but google doesn’t rely on OEM kit for most of the things in their ecosystem. Of all the companies, Garmin is pretty front end neutral, it doesn’t actually use your phone to process the result. And they’ve built there current market cap on that.
– Rise of AI / coaching. Eh. Prove that AI is in a state where it makes a meaningful difference. AI can’t write a better programme than a straightforward rules based algorithm yet. Of all the companies, Garmin is probably in the best place to deploy ML tools to understand what works / what doesn’t.
– Rise of AI / data walls. Frankly, I’m happier with Garmin not sharing my health data. If they become more secure I’m happy with that. These companies are in a unique position to monetise data about me that didn’t previously exist, some of what you’re talking about would be my trigger to completely disengage from their product line.
– All the points in ‘what else’: none are unique to Garmin, or affect Garmin to a noticeably different degree.
The only point that I see as even vaguely valid is hardware maturity + other players. As there is less revolutionary kit to put in the watch it’s harder to distinguish the Garmin from the Apple / Suunto product. But it’s important to bear in mind scale, this is the market cap for a few companies:
Suunto – $1bn
Whoop – $4bn
Garmin – $30bn
Apple – $3tn
As far as I can tell, they are the biggest sports tech company in the world (might be wrong here). So yeah, there’s a really significant threat from Apple / other bigger general tech companies encroaching in on their space, but I don’t really see the Fitbit / Suunto / Whoop taking significant chunks from them. They will remain a step behind as they likely have R&D budgets smaller in line with their smaller revenue.
Against something like Apple, yeah that might limit Garmin watch sales. But are Apple going to product cycling computers, or RADAR driven lights?
Obviously Garmin can fail, any company can, but your argument doesn’t feel particularly likely.
P.S.
“A tale that was obvious with hindsight”
So… Garmin are good at thinking strategically and predicting what people are likely to want? Doesn’t this invalidate your entire point which is basically “these are the reasons Garmin might not stay ahead of the market”?
Like, you’ve raised all these potential strategic pitfalls about the company that has dominated the market in the last 15 years, and then pointed out that their last strategic shift was successful. So… what was the point of this article?
Not really.
I’m sure every issue I raise here has been thought about by Garmin
The AMOLED issue was probably as obvisou to them as it was to me.
Some of Garmin’s issues can’t be so ‘easily’ solved by buying another piece of tech – eg it cant control geopolitical factors, it can’t really control the competition, and it can’t have all the access to tech platofrms it would like etc.
“So yeah, there’s a really significant threat from Apple / other bigger general tech companies encroaching in on their space, but I don’t really see the Fitbit / Suunto / Whoop taking significant chunks from them. They will remain a step behind as they likely have R&D budgets smaller in line with their smaller revenue”
yes I can’t see Suunto or Whoop taking chinks from Garmin and Fitbit is currently in a state of flux.
yes Garmin has a large R&D budget as stated in it financial returns – one of the reasons it stays on top.
yes global supply chains affect all these firms broadly similarly
Can you not see the encroachment on Garmin’s lower end markets by the chepaer Chinese-like products? I strongly suspect that’s one reason why Garmin focusses on the other end of the price scale.
“As far as I can tell, they are the biggest sports tech company in the world”. Let’s assume that’s true. But one of the issues is that the smart companies like Apple ARE for certain encoroaching on sports tech ie on Garmin’s market AND that’s a one-way street!!!!! Garmin barely encroaches on what Apple is doing
I did really enjoy your speculations. To me, it feels like Garmin is at a similar point as Nokia a while ago, where they have superior functionality with a massive margin, but are lacking usability which will eventually drive users away slowly. I am less worried about the impact of AI, as Garmin has lots of data and could relatively easily embrace AI more. I am, however, less sure that they will be able to evolve their interface quickly enough.
An interesting example is weight training, which has just seen a boost with the Fenix 8 with Strenghts Plan. I think that the implementation feels incredibly clumsy, as it only uses your watch and the approach is leaning too heavily on what works well for endurance sports (and to make matters worse, you cannot have a strength and endurance (e.g., cycling) plan active at the same time).
Hevy shows what you can do, if you are not bound by the endurance paradigm. I really like the implementation from Hevy on the iPhone/Apple Watch, where you can easily change exercises on the go (if a machine is busy) or simply entre weights/repetitions on the watch (or the phone). It just feels so much easier to use!
Somewhat related question: Is there a way to get Garmin to write proper heart rate data to Apple Health? For me, Garmin Connect seems to only write periodic heart rate date with blank spots in between for me, which then get interpreted by apps such as Healthfit, as if I only exercised a few minutes. I would really like to be able use my devices more interchangeably, but Garmin doesn’t make that very easy!
thank you
I enjoy speculating and hearing why people think I’m wrong…that’s one way for me to learn! If they disagree nicely I enjoy it even more 🙂
AI – you could be right. But AFAIK Garmin has made zero annoucnemnts on that front so far. Then again, neither did apple until a few weeks ago, at which point they revealed it was a crucial evolution to their ecosytem that they’d obviously spent a few years planning and developing in secret. maybe Garmin is planning in the same way right now? I’m pretty certain about most of the issues in the article except the imapct of Garmin, mostly because no-one has any idea if and how they plan to pursue it.
Interface – I think Garmin rolled that dice a year or so ago and what we see today with Fenix 8 and Edge 1050 is the result. IDK if they plan a subsequent refresh any time soon. Suunto recently refreshed (I like their UI) and, as recently reported, Polar is refreshing next year.
Weights: One of the discussion groups I’m in is not keen on Garmin’s implementation ehre either, they love the Apple BEVEL app. https://www.bevel.health/ , I’d not seen HEVY https://www.hevyapp.com/
Q “Is there a way to get Garmin to write proper heart rate data to Apple Health?”
A: Nope (you might be able to do some wierd and wonderful circuitous thing with fitnesssyncer … for a price. i’ve not looekd at it for years but it was particualrly good at gluing ecosystems together in ways that shoudl really be free!
Bevel looks really clean indeed in particular to track your training load! I find the 50 GBP subscription a bit too much for what it is but do see why people may rally like it.
Yikes I didn’t know it was that much! The guy who develops it is pretty clued up on the correct uses of the various algorithms, he’s one of the better ones
I wear two watches. A galaxy smart watch and a garmin vivoactive 4, but I owned other garmin devices before. So why two watches? Because of a website. AI insights? Who really cares. I am sick of AI telling me things I already know. Tell me something special, ooops can’t do that, it is beyond the training. I also don’t need to be programmed by the AI.
But back to Garmin. I have tried to live without my garmin, but it does not work. Battery life is better. Website allows me to look at the data in a bigger format. Apple health is notoriously bad to look at, and Google Fit is not much better. I refuse to pay for a subscription. I bought the device and if it is a premium so be it. Basically all that is left is Garmin.
I agree many implementations are in their infancy and not very good.
It’s obvious this technology is going to be better and more widely applied in the fairly near future.
Look at what Whoop coach does now. You can ask it something like “Why did i perfrom badly today,” and it can go through the tags you’ve put on various previous events and seek patterns in the data that might explain why you performed badly. That’s just an example using correlations on a large data set to discover answers to a one-off question and presented back with a LLM. But it is indicative of clever stuff that can be done, it’s cleverer than for example Garmin Readiness (whether it’s right is another matter). It’s more efficient than looking at the same old charts hoping to find the same answer.
You could use use “AI Endurance” a couple of years ago to discover (through ML) what types of sessions you have historically responded best to. that can guide your future training to be more effective. Garmin Daily suggested workouts don’t do that.
Of course, Garmin could have done these things last year or this year. It just hasn’t. And you have to ask why. (Maybe Garmin Intelligence comes out in January…maybe never…IDK!)
FWIW I use a Garmin and an apple Watch, and a Wahoo bike computer (usually those 3)
Bought the T-Rex 3 on launch after owning the original T-Rex for 3 years and loving it. I use the 3rd party Notify and fitness app and it unlocks loads of features like continuous sensor monitoring. Link’s to all the ecosystems apart from apple and Garmin. Amazfit have got it right for me with the same features the competition has and no subscription model to pay for. I paid a one off payment for the 3rd party app to support the developer. Not 1 bit of buyer’s remorse.
Good to hear.