11 March 2024
Each week over the past three weeks, Suunto has dropped a nugget or two of new information. Each by themselves probably would have made sense in the ‘Week in Review’ posts – had there actually been those posts each week. Instead, they’re getting a Suunto-Super-Monday style post, with everything in one go. Think of it like a combo meal, albeit I’m not entirely sure which piece is the drink vs meal vs chips.
In any case, onto what I think is probably the biggest bit of news.
Suunto Platform Integration with Xiaomi Mi Fitness:
Over the last few years, Suunto has arguably increased its 3rd party endurance-sports connectivity more than anyone out there aside from Garmin. Sure, there will always be gazillions of apps that grab Apple Health/WatchOS data, but that’s a bit different than the connectivity Suunto has been building with something like 150+ app partners that sometimes do legit bidirectional data into the Suunto platform. Likewise, we’ve seen companies like Polar start to license their sports algorithms, similar to what Firstbeat used to do before Garmin bought them. And Polar even recently announced direct Sennheiser earbud integration into the Polar Flow platform.
But this most recent Suunto announcement is seemingly the start of something quite different: Other watch makers leveraging Suunto’s app and backend web platform. I’m not aware of any current major watch makers which allow that for what is sorta their competitors.
To start, Xiaomi makes a lot of things – phones, activity trackers, smart watches, etc (including the Mi Band and Mi Watch). They’re most popular in China and Asia, but still available in the world including the US & Europe. These budget devices can be as low as ~$30-$40 for the bands, and into the low $100 range for the watches. The apps on these units tend to be more basic in terms of features, and don’t tend to sway as heavily towards the sports/endurance realm.
This partnership aims to address that gap. Xiaomi device owners can link their accounts to Suunto, in much the same way you’d link an account to other platforms Strava or TrainingPeaks. Here’s how that looks from the Xiaomi side, when choosing to connect to Suunto:
And then once connected, you’ll get your workout and 24×7 metrics (such as sleep and activity tracking), showing within the Suunto app as well as Xiaomi apps. For example, a side-by-side comparison of the same activity shown on both sides (Mi Fitness at left, Suunto App at right). Of course, there’s more data when scrolling down on the Suunto side, including splits, training volume, etc…
In addition, because it’s essentially the full breadth of the Suunto App, users are also getting onwards connectivity to even more 3rd party apps/platforms than the Mi Fitness app is doing natively.
It’s an interesting partnership. I’d assume the goal here from Suunto’s side is both revenue directly from Xiaomi in the form of some sort of licensing of the platform, as well as the tangential hope this might convert some users from the more basic Xiaomi watches to the more sporty Suunto watches.
Suunto App Expansions:
Suunto has released three new apps this month, all roughly aligned to the Vertical Week, and supporting that challenge and related ones. Here’s the quick overview of the three new apps:
And then here’s the more detailed specs of each particular app. First there is ‘Vertical Race’, which admittedly is a wee bit confusing when you’ve got their two marquee products named ‘Suunto Vertical’ and ‘Suunto Race’. The name of this app really has nothing to do with either watch. It’s just bad luck that this app is sorta the Apple equivalent to naming the app: “iPad iMac”.
Then there’s the Ultrawalk app:
And finally the Vertical Week app.
Easy peasy, let’s get onto the last bit of news.
UTMB Partners with Suunto:
I don’t generally cover sponsorship announcements too much, unless there’s some fun inside-baseball angle to it. Which, occurs here.
This one is notable, albeit probably pretty obvious that something had to give. Up till now, Wahoo had a watch partnership with the Ironman group, inclusive of UTMB. However, with Wahoo announcing there won’t be a successor to the Wahoo RIVAL watch, it doesn’t make sense to keep sponsoring the UTMB aspect of things (since it’s a running race). Whether or not that “multi-year” contract Wahoo previously had was set to expire or not, isn’t clear to me.
However, what is clear, is Suunto has stepped in to partner with UTMB for their World Series events. Presumably we’ll now see a gigantic Suunto Vertical or Suunto Race watch hoisted over the start/finish line, as opposed to the previous Wahoo RIVAL:
(Photo credit: UTMB)
What’ll be interesting there is whether or not Suunto can gain ground back in the ultra scene. Years ago, Suunto absolutely dominated this venue. Then of course Garmin came along with the Fenix series, slowly erasing Suunto’s leadership from an endurance sports standpoint. Garmin even launched the Fenix 6 at UTMB in 2019, alongside being listed as an ‘official supplier’ that year.
But of course, times have changed. Since then, Suunto seems to have found their mojo again, now offering map-capable products (Race & Vertical) that can compete in this arena. But at the same time, COROS has also entered the game with not just capable products, but a vast array of sponsored athletes (both big names and smaller influencers) – even stealing some big names away from Suunto.
Obviously though, big names and title sponsorships might influence product sales, but at the end of the day a product still has to be good. That’s even more true in this age of widespread and diverse review availability.
Anyways, I don’t know whether or not this will move the dial for Suunto in this realm, but I do know that I expect to see a gigantic Suunto watch over the finish line by this summer (the opening Suunto sponsorship event a few weeks ago lacked any suchwatch). And heck, given the Race’s AMOLED display, they could legit do some cool dynamic UI/graphics things with that tied to race results/etc (like we see in other stadium sports).
With that, thanks for reading!