[cerol]

As a marathon runner, I know TomTom mainly for its sports watches. But I feel they've been fading away slowly. Garmin is still the champion in that area, but both must be taking a hit with all the cheap chinese knock offs. At the end of the day, you don't even need a high end sports watch unless you're a high end athlete. Reliable location tracking and good battery life is all you need, every other information can be derived thereof (avg speed, pace and distance). Only if you're into extreme activities you'll need something like a high end TomTom or Garmin (like 35+ km run in a hot day, or an Iron Man).

[reidjs]

There is a luxury market among social athletes for these watches. Rolex for runners/bikers.

[zelos]

> But I feel they've been fading away slowly.

TomTom closed their sports division and made most of the staff redundant.

[cerol]

That explains it. I recently had to download their activity upload app, but it was nowhere to be found on their website. Eventually I found a binary somewhere on the internet and it worked, and their upload infrastructure is still running it seems. As long as I can get the activities from my 8 year old TomTom Runner to my Strava account, I'm good.

[nradov]

Garmin is vulnerable to disruption by cheap Chinese competitors at the low end of the market. They're now trying to move beyond selling individual devices to build an ecosystem with multiple types of devices connected to online services. And their latest devices are starting to provide something like a little AI fitness coach on your wrist, which is valuable even to ordinary people not into extreme activities. So far the execution is a little clumsy and buggy but the potential is huge.

[m463]

I've wondered if garmin is vulnerable to the apple watch.

That said, I love my garmin watch - it's and offline device that is useful without selling all your data.