For many people, Garmin is the company that used to make satnavs for cars.
It does actually still make them but, needless to say, the market for those kinds of devices has cratered now that everyone has reliable mapping system in their pockets.
But Garmin has survived that by refocusing its business on fitness and activity devices like smartwatches and bike computers; all the way to trackers for golf club bags and wireless engine cut-off systems for boats.
The common denominator in most of its business remains GPS tracking, though. It's just managed to find so many different applications for that beyond the in-car satnav.
The personal fitness device industry that Garmin now inhabits is a competitive space – with the likes of Apple, Samsung and Google all having smartwatches of their own, for example.
But Garmin is very much seen as the go-to for the professional or serious amateur athlete. While you can buy a basic Garmin smartwatch for around €200, you could also spend €2,000 on one of their most advanced models.
In the year to end of June they had $6.7 billion in revenues – up nearly 20% year on year.
But now it’s facing a legal battle against another big fitness brand – Strava.
Strava is a fitness tracking app – probably one of the most popular in the world. It’s been around since 2009 – first gaining popularity among cyclists, but quickly becoming the go-to tracking app for all sorts of activities.
The idea behind Strava is that the user installs the app on your smartphone – or their smartwatch. Then when they go for a run or cycle it tracks their route, speed and potentially other things like their heart-rate – and the user can then analyse and compare all of that data afterwards.
Perhaps the thing that made Strava so successful was the fact that it had some social elements built in there too.
It’s long made it easy for people to share their activity on social media - so they can brag about their new PB.
It also has local leaderboards, so there are bragging rights there if you can be the fastest in your area; which obviously encourages people to keep coming back.
What’s behind the row between the two?
There are two elements to this.
The biggest part of it relates to features that Strava has in its app – one called Segments, which lets users pick out portions of their route and compare it with their previous runs as well as other Strava users.
The other feature - Heatmaps – lets users see what areas and routes are popular with others, and what areas they’ve covered in their own activities in the past.
Strava has patented both of these features – Segments in 2011 (though Garmin launched a similar feature to segments before Strava’s patent was granted in 2015).
The Heatmaps patent was granted in 2017.
And after this the two companies did sit down and hammer out a cooperation agreement which brought Strava’s Segments to Garmin devices – and led to the two sides working quite closely over the years.
Until now, anyway.
Strava recently filed a case alleging three counts of patent infringement against Garmin and one count of breach of contract – claiming that Garmin has broken their cooperation agreement by expanding its use of its own features that mirror Segments and Heatmaps, and doing so outside of the Strava app.
And it’s looking for damages to be paid, and for the sale of watches that infringe its patents to be halted.
Has this kind of happened before?
This has similarities to a phenomenon in the software world called 'sherlocking’.
The name relates to a search tool Apple used to use on the Mac - called Sherlock – which wasn’t all that good in its early years.
To fill the gap another company created an alternative search tool that had more feature – which they called Watson. And it proved popular for a time – at least until Apple updated its Sherlock app to incorporate all of the best features that Watson had brought to the table.
That ultimately eliminated the need for people to use Watson, and it disappeared.
And we’ve seen this happen to a greater or lesser extent since then – especially on the iPhone.
As people will remember, that didn’t have that many in-built apps or features in its early years, but over time the amount of things it could do out of the box has expanded significantly.
And at certain points that has seen Apple offer features that you’d previously have needed to download or buy a third party app to do.
For example, the flashlight. In the early days of the iPhone there were countless apps available that let you turn the camera’s flash into a light, but eventually Apple added a button to the operating software to allow users to the same thing, and overnight all of those apps were redundant.
More recently it’s introduced features to let people record their phone calls – and block spam calls – both of which were previously available through paid-for apps.
And to an extent that seems to be what’s happening here – Garmin is expanding its built-in features, and that’s stepping on the toes of what an app like Strava has to offer.
In this case obviously Strava argues it has patents to protect itself against this kind of thing happening - but Garmin will say it introduced at least some of the features before Strava got those patents.
Besides, patents aren’t water-tight – they don’t prove 100% that a company was the first to come up with an idea, nor do they definitely stop others from creating similar products.
And what could the fall-out from this be?
Potentially Strava could force Garmin to pay some form of compensation – maybe even a licence fee – for using its idea. Or it could force them to remove features from its devices.
In the meantime users will be concerned that a court could put some kind of a restriction on the sale of Garmin devices – in the US at least.
Or Garmin could be forced to curtail the features on its devices until the case is settled.
Something similar has happened to Apple in recent years when a company called Masimo alleged it had stolen its technology in a feature that allowed its Watch device to measure users’ blood-oxygen level.
Apple was forced to push out an update that stopped Watches sold in the US from offering blood oxygen readings. So even though the device was physically capable of doing that, its software was hobbled to stop it from making it accessible to users.
Recently Apple said it has found a workaround which has allowed it to reactivate blood oxygen readings in its device - but that was nearly two years after the ban started. And Masimo has since launched a suit claiming the workaround still infringes its patents, so it’s far from over for Apple.
What’s the second element to the Strava/Garmin row?
Two weeks ago Strava’s chief product officer Matt Salazar posted to the Strava subreddit to, he said, give some of the background to the action it had taken against Garmin.
He went into detail about new guidelines Garmin was introducing for companies that connect their apps to its hardware – which would include the likes of Strava.
It requires apps to add the Garmin logo to anything that relies on data gathered through a Garmin device – which they have to start doing from the start of next month. That means that someone who does a run on Strava, using their Garmin watch, will have a Garmin logo appear when they share their stats on social media.
Strava said this amounted to Garmin trying to hijack other apps to advertise their products – and Matt Salazar said "We think this is your data" – arguing users should be free to share and upload it as they please. He asked users to voice their concerns and let Garmin know that they weren’t happy.
But the attempt at drumming up a groundswell of support backfired pretty spectacularly.
The post got hundreds of comments from Strava users - some calling them hypocrites because of how frequently Strava shoehorns advertising into its own experience - including having its logo on the data that people share to social media.
Many other users also made clear that, if there was a point where the Strava and Garmin relationship broke down and the app no longer functioned on their devices, then they would abandon Strava and not Garmin.
After all, there are countless fitness tracking apps out there – including what Garmin offers itself – and if people have already sunk hundreds or even thousands of euros into their physical device, they’re not going to give up on that all too easily.
It really shows how vulnerable app can be…
Absolutely.
A start-up software company really needs to be accessible to smartphone users to be successful nowadays – but in order to do that, you generally have to make it available on the app stores that are run by big companies like Apple and Google.
That means you have to follow their rules – and if you don’t they’ll just kick you off. You have to give them a cut of the revenue you make through their platforms, and you are potentially open to them undermining your whole product - either by changing the rules around what third party apps can do, or introducing apps or features of their own that make your offering redundant.
This has happened to some of the password manager apps that many people might have used – both Apple and Android now have password managers of their own, so there’s far less need for people to pay a subscription to another company.
Same goes for transcription apps – they used to be something you had to pay for but now that’s a standard feature of most modern smartphones.
That’s not to say all those companies have been put out of business – but they lost a huge amount of their revenue - pretty much overnight - and now have to work an awful lot harder to convince people to pay.
And even if they feel like they have any kind of a case – it’d be a real David and Goliath trying to take on the likes of Apple and Google.
Some bigger ‘Davids’ have tried to fight app store rules over the years – Spotify, for example, has regularly complained about Apple’s restrictions and says it has given its own music service an unfair advantage.
The maker of Fortnite, Epic Games, has also taken on Apple over its rule requiring developers to give them a cut of any revenue generated through the App Store. that led to Fortnite being unavailable on the iPhone for a time.
Besides lawsuits, both Epic Games and Spotify have also complainted to the European Commission and have had some success on that front.
Meanwhile Europe’s Digital Markets Act has brought in new standards on how much access the likes of Apple and Google has to give to rivals gives to rivals. That includes requiring them to allow alternative app stores on the iPhone that should avoid Apple’s commission… though there have been complaints about how well they have or haven’t followed those rules.
For what it’s worth Apple has also complained about the requirements and recently said it was holding back the release of some new features – like its live translation on its new AirPods - because having to open that up to other companies could compromise user privacy and security.
