Agreed, to get the most of it, you want as many Apple devices as possible. And that won’t change.
Out of curiosity, what would you do if you were in Garmin’s exec team? You seem to have a finger on the pulse.
To be honest I would stay the course and hope Apple doesnt figure out a 5 day battery life.
At this point, Garmin and sport watches are just incremental changes, nothing huge. New versions bring better battery life, better screen, better HRM, better accuracy. But nothing else. Nothing earth shattering…
The next step for them is maybe get their feet deep into smart watches that do sports… really dig into the venu and make viable apple watch competitor with apps and stuff like that… maybe not as comprehensive… but something like phone calls and and API for people to create apps. A smart watch that has buttons for a proper structure wo (I know apple JUST added this).
If I was Garmin I would go on offense with a smart watch with crazy battery life. It will not transform any apple watch users, but it might give others an alternative if you dont have an iphone.
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In short, they can’t. Apple blocks them.
That’s the crux of the issue that I think a lot of people don’t understand. While they can get closer on Android, they simply can’t on iOS due to hard blocks Apple puts in place. Garmin can’t access iMessage on an iPhone. That in an of itself is DOA for any messaging function. Garmin tried a few years back, it failed miserably (Vivoactive 3 LTE), because messages were bifurcated due to this limitation.
And while non-US folks focus more on WhatsApp or other messaging options, the reality is most US iPhone users are hardcore into iMessage, and that hasn’t changed (nor do I see any reason it will).
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Its like apple is afraid of competition or something… 
Long-term it’s tougher, as Apple will keep creeping onto their turf in these areas. I think a lot of the focus of this thread is missing the point of Apple and power meters: This isn’t about competing with bike computers.
It’s about competing with other watch companies. Apple is playing the long game here. The very long game. They’re slowly ticking away reasons why you might need a Garmin watch (or any other competitor).
Last year, it was about removing battery life (with Ultra) as an objection for 90%+ of athletic use cases. They did that. They also removed most barriers associated with running metrics. And they removed some barriers associated with screen size and visibility (though, I’d argue it’s still tough to use with gloves or wet conditions). Same goes for structured workouts. They also removed the barrier related to triathlon support - heck, it probably does it better than Garmin does.
This year, it’s removing purchasing barriers related to cycling stuff. As well as 3rd party apps API to push structured workouts. TrainingPeaks is onboard, and TrainerRoad could so so too if they wanted to (and frankly, they’d be wise to). You scan likewise start to see them laying the groundwork for maps as the next frontier.
Next year will be about mapping, routing, and all things navigation. Again, removing barriers/objections.
There will always be people that want more advanced sports functions - and right now, Garmin is clearly the leader in there. For every sports-focused item I outlined above, Garmin tends to do it 10x better and deeper. But there are cracks in that. Take running track mode. Apple’s is better is you live in a supported country: It just works, instantly. But Garmin’s is better for the other 170+ countries. Yet Garmin actually has more track data than Apple. Why doesn’t Garmin split the difference and do both modes?
Garmin has to get out of the ‘do everything on the device’ mentality. They need to start leveraging their cloud services more. Not in a ‘must always be connected’ way, but in a ‘we have a ton of data we can leverage’. Garmin has long held the belief that you can buy their device at a store and never connect it to the internet. It’s still true today for 99.99% of features. Never update it if you don’t want to. While that’s enviable, I think they’re starting to pigeon-hole themselves in areas.
All that said, what Garmin is really good at doing is rolling out features that athletes want. I think it’s easy to forget when you see seemingly incremental upgrades every 14-18 months from Garmin (e.g. Fenix 7 to Fenix 7 Pro). But when you step back, Garmin releases more features than Apple does on that release cadence. And then you step back further into the lens of a 3-4 year cycle, and the increases in functionality is insane. Sure, not everyone uses every feature, but everyone has their own “I need this” feature. It’s what’s largely crushed competitors like Wahoo in the bike computer space.
Finally, I think it’s impressive to see what real-world market share looks like. A very simple tests is just get on an airplane and look at what people are actually wearing as they board and walk down the aisle. None of this supposed ‘market study’ stuff that’s mostly just guesses, and often heavily skewed towards promotional activity in countries that have low long term usage. These days, it’s overwhelmingly Apple Watch & Garmin’s, with Samsung and the odd Fitbit tossed in.
People are buying Garmin that aren’t TrainerRoad users. Nor would they ever imagine that something like TrainerRoad exists. They’re buying a Garmin because the battery life is good, and the smart features are good enough. And they might vaguely do something fitness focused (especially on the Fenix/Epix lines, where many people are buying them more for looks/style than anything fitness related).
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Regulators have failed to create open, encrypted and interoperable standards. I would love to see Sigbal’s and Telegram’s protocols adopted. Google has backed a few suggested standards, but they all lacked end-to-end encryption. Instant nope.
At least when messaging is concerned, Messages does not have a very dominant position outside the US. I use Messages, Signal, Line, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. I think one or two friends prefer Telegram which I don’t use actively. And I wish I could give up on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, though.
Would you go with wear OS or something homegrown?
Regarding battery life, my impression is that Garmin er al. are essentially maxed out. Even hypothetically going from 10 to 15 days does not seem like it would have any practical impact on most users. Going from charging daily to weekly does.
“Wear OS” and “crazy battery life” do not go in the same sentence.
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This… It’s getting better but is not looking great
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I know. But at some point you need to make the jump from a semi smart watch to a smart watch, at least for some models. Garmin currently trades more limited, focussed functionality for much better battery life. I don’t think this can go on in perpetuity, at least not for all of Garmin’s models.
People will come to expect e. g. contactless payments, support for music and podcasts, and voice support. Because wear OS and watch OS have been doing that for ages now. I also think that in the long run, Garmin needs an app ecosystem, which in a way extend Garmin’s person power on the platform side. Otherwise, things like proper glucose monitoring and insulin pump integration are unlikely to happen.
If I were Garmin, my vision would be to make it the sports-centric wear OS device. I’d pick a floor of roughly 3 days battery life (roughly the same as the Apple Watch Ultra), add support for fast charging like the latest Apple Watches and work up from there. Fast charging alleviates a lot of the battery life concerns. If the charge you get during a shower will last you through another day, I think most people will be fine.
From what I have read, wear OS is not as great as watch OS when it comes to battery life and watch-specific SoCs/SiPS are revved only very slowly. (To be fair, Apple didn’t change their SiP in I think 4 years, they just incremented the number and hoped nobody would notice.) There is also uneasiness because Google has acquired FitBit.
I’ve never used them (as I don’t really care for those features) but Garmin already has contactless on some (maybe even most?) of their watches - and they have music (spotify and others) on most of their watches these days.
Admittedly it Garmin Pay support is pretty limited, depending on your country - that’s a business development issue rather than a hardware and services one.
I agree with the comments about Garmin having to make a switch to Android Wear OS if they want to compete in the smart watch space on some of their watches.
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I think this is a good example of a regulatory challenge. I don’t think it is hard, but you need to scale to a lot of countries. Even Google falls way short of Apple, and Apple isn’t great either: rolling out services to other countries. If you live in a tier 1 country such as Germany or Japan, it is alright. But anything below and it gets tricky. When are Austria and Denmark getting those features?
Music is a similar problem, it isn’t about programming an mp3 player, it is about music rights.
Then there are special cases. At least a few years back there was a special Japan version of Apple’s iPhones and Watches that came with (hardware) support for the metro pass standard. A huge company like Apple can solve this problem with person power in ways Garmin cannot.
That’s why I would probably leave those issues to a company like Google.
Yeah the payment problem is also that they need to go to every financial services provider individually to get them on board. Garmin have a lot of supported banks in the USA, but relatively few outside of that. They’ll never be able to compete with Apple in that space, simply because the brand recognition isn’t there.
I’d imagine music licensing isnt really Garmin’s problem - as you can use Spotify app on their devices. There’s Amazon Music and deezer support as well (and you can move your own MP3 files onto the watch).
Here’s a link to all their supported music services:
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Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried this FTP estimate on WatchOs 10 and compared that with TR AI FTP ?
I saw a YouTube video (DesFit was the YouTuber) and his data were like 70W lower with Apple Watch FTP https://youtu.be/2Ficbhrt_hg?si=guekBM8CVxx9knbH
(around 7:50 he compares FTPs with Garmin and TR)
I 100% agree with this. I use an Apple watch 8 for Stryd running workouts either outdoors, or on a treadmill. Once planned workouts are pre loaded to my calendar, I just put my shoes on, touch the app on the watch and away I go, zero faff! Somethings like this for trainerroad workouts would be very convenient either indoor or outdoor.
When I do a cycling workout indoors, I sometimes just jump on my Peloton bike depending on what time I have and the type of workout e.g z2, tempo, ss, as it is ready to go. Having to connect an ipad, phone or laptop to zwift / trainerroad etc and put a separate HR monitor on when I use my bike on the trainer… ensure I am all connected etc sounds easy but it is a slight hassle. If I could just press a button on a watch I am already wearing that has HR included I would probably do it for most workouts… There is definitely a market for those looking for convenience.
Does this solve your concern?
I see the same as Des. TR has me around 305w, and Garmin around 290ish or so. Apple has me at 240w.
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Someone should record a ramp test on the Apple Watch and report back.
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And in this article a big difference like yours and Des is mentioned
I’ve done a Ramp test and Recorded it on the Apple Watch (I was 3 weeks ago and was using the Beta version of the software) and it came out 40 watts lower, my experience seems the same as others, well out
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For 4 months a year where I live, I’m wearing arm warmers or long sleeve jersey/jacket. A watch is useless to me while training. Furthermore my experiences with bluetooth connections on my bikes are terrible. Bluetooth is banned from my bikes, besides, any inroads Apple makes into cycling will come with trying to put our data behind their garden wall and charge feature subscriptions. No thanks. BTW I own and use an Apple Desktop, Laptop, Iphone and an Ultra watch, so I’m not anti Apple.