Open letter about change to APP
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Open letter to Suunto:
To whom it may concern,
My wife and I have been using and enjoying our Ambit3 Suunto watches for the last few years. We’re very active people, almost full-time riders (enduro, on-road, track), and we travel most of the year constantly training in various forms (swimming, power walking, different genres of riding, running, hiking, etc).
For the sake of efficiency, health, and improvement, we’re dependent on the in depth telemetry provided by our respective watches.
Suunto is in the process of abandoning a somewhat flawed platform - that of Movescount - to move onto an even more flawed and much more basic Suunto APP. Trusting Suunto researched the market, we switched from Movescount to the new APP.
We’ve been thoroughly disappointed with the change. The software doesn’t begin to do justice to the capabilities of the watch, nor does it provide the totality of information we’ve come to expect and use.
It seems a mystery as to why Suunto has opted to shift paradigm from being the leader in detailed assessment, telemetry/data for the most demanding and professional athletes, to being a third runner up (at best) in a world of ‘easy’ and ‘fun’ and ‘simple’ user interfaced ‘sport watches’.
It makes absolutely no sense for most of us to continue sticking with Suunto, when the other three competitive companies have already cornered the market and practically perfected their more user-friendly (and perhaps more simplistic) software.
One company dominates in academia, the other dominates in GPS across a vast array of applications, and the third seamlessly integrates itself with a refined and stable computing and mobile platform.
Suunto HAD a place reserved for those willing to give up certain comforts and conveniences of user-friendliness and the experience of simplicity, in order to provide a more accurate and broad informational spectrum rich with data.
With this forced change/migration to the premature APP, Suunto has clearly taken away its own ‘raison d’être’. All the qualities that made it stand out and made a consumer forgo other options and choose Suunto, have disappeared with the advent of the Suunto APP.
Sadly, in action, it almost seems as though the recent investing in the Amer Sports Group has the intention of slowly steering Suunto in the direction of its demise.
Change is never easy to effectuate, and there will always be resistance. In this particular case, perhaps the resistance is based on tangible and clear reasons, rather than being nothing more than knee jerk and emotional reactions.
It is my understanding that Suunto is basing some of the choices it will make (for example, in the case of the Ambit2) on the amount and intensity of response received.
Considering the nature and profile of the lion’s share of Suunto users, most of whom have stringent and extensive training schedules, it’s apparent (due to time constraints) that a formal and/or literary response to the new APP, would be scarce and limited.
If Suunto wants a more honest and reliable feedback, perhaps adding a ‘feedback’ or ‘poll’ button directly in the APP would provide a better picture.
If this is the end of the road for our relationship with Suunto, I suppose though sad, it will have been the price to pay for progress. I’m hoping Suunto will adopt a more enlightened approach and make the appropriate changes needed to continue occupying the market segment it’s been a leader in, maintaining full customer retention.
Sincerely,
Professor P. B. -
@whychange Thank you for this Professor P. B.
I ll make sure it arrives were it belongs.
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@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos thank you most kindly.
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@whychange I btw love your nickanme
thans for this it made my day. I have delivered the package
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@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos thank you again. I did send it to Suunto and received a generic response. I called them out on their response, and was replied to through a yet another generic response.
Here’s hoping someone with the ability to act gets a hold of it.
Again thank you for helping get some traction.
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@whychange The support personnel are guided to give generic responses. I have contact with them from time to time in a personal and business level and they cannot do differently.
They do want to reply in a different level especially at this time, but due to official support and having limited insight they can’t. If they say something wrong this can go wrong.I hope this is understandable.
In any case feel free to pm me contact me in any way and I promise to respond in not a generic way
Community Manager / Admin @Suunto
Creator of Quantified-Self.io
youtube.com/c/dimitrioskanellopoulos -
@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos, what you explain makes a lot of sense. I believe, after all, the hope is to find a way to render/maintain Suunto as a viable and competitive alternative.
History has shown us that any instability, complexity, and/or questionable direction can make even a ‘better’ product become the proverbial underdog. Betamax, Pepsi, Tomtom, Blackberry, just to name a few, have suffered such fates. Fingers crossed that our watches don’t become hipster heirlooms!
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@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos I guess I am one of the Ambit 2 users that the Professor mentions.
I do not follow the Suunto news that much and was only aware of these developments the e-mail sent out by Suunto end of April.
My father was an avid Ambit user. Hiking, Climbing, Trekking, Running, Alpinism - Winter & Summer.
After a while I got jealous and bought my Ambit 2 late 2014.
The first Ambit 3 was already out by then, but as I didn’t need the wireless connectivity for tracking heart rate while swimming, or connectivity to a smart phone and was on a budget, I purchased the Ambit 2.It had everything I needed and still checks all the boxes today.
For me it looked better than a Garmin or Polar, because I felt I could do more with it then just go running or cycling (for example by having the many different sport modes, which I could even customise).If I had to choose now, I would still choose it now: I do not need bluetooth, touch screen, color screen, … on my watch like the Suunto 9, Spartan, …
So if movescount has to disappear, my vote goes to a platform that can be accessed on a pc, where I can upload data, download routes I create, create sport modes, … and connect with my cable.
Any replacement should have the same capabilities as Movescount.
But for me movescount is perfect, so in my opinion “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”.What is the best way to follow the news on this subject and where can we show Suunto that we would not like movescount to disappear?
Please forward my concerns.
