Suunto Opens App Creation to Anyone (No Account Required!)
Suunto announced today that they are now allowing anyone to create apps for their watches, even without opening a partnership account with the company. This allows anyone to download the newly available SuuntoPlus Editor extension for Visual Studio, allowing developers to write, test, and publish applications directly on their watch. Then, if they want to make that available on the main SuuntoPlus App Store, they can do that.
The main difference
Just as a reminder, Suunto was the first watchmaker to have visual apps – since 2012. They beat Garmin (2014), Pebble (2014), and Apple (2015) by years, although they obviously haven’t reached the same popularity as those. Part of that is because while Suunto started apps early in 2012, they put the whole concept on ice a decade later, killing their first App Store. Yes, in 2022, they’re relaunching with select partners, but there’s never been the same ‘anyone can join’ camp that the first show had. This changes that.
Oh, and Suunto announced a few new apps for everyone (non-developers alike), including a key gap in their lineup: the Beer Mile App. More on that in a second.
An extension for Visual Studio Code
First, Suunto releases their StudioPlus Editor extension for Visual Studio. This is almost identical to what Suunto themselves use internally, saying it’s “95% the same” as how they develop apps for their platform. Until now, to be able to access this you had to be a full Suunto partner. That wasn’t a big/high bar, but it was a bar nonetheless. It meant that in practice, hobbyist developers wouldn’t bother jumping through hoops (and a sensor company would).
And as we’ve seen in countless watch app stores, it’s often these hobby apps that end up being some of the most popular.
Here are the pieces that you can now do without any partner account, and the other steps if you want to expand, make those simple and easy:
In any case, Suunto is now in the Visual Studio marketplace, where you can find an extension there, which also includes a simulator feature.
Once you’ve installed that, you’ll be able to create apps, test apps, including simulations with test data and more.
And again, none of this requires a partner account. So that means you’ll end up publishing it on your watch, but you couldn’t publish it on a friends watch (or, online).
But, Suunto says if you want to take that next step, they’ve streamlined the process and have a full landing page to apply to publish it on the App Store. This, in turn, gets access to the Suunto Cloud API as well.
From there, you can upload your app to the SuuntoPlus App Store.
All of this seems straightforward and shows that Suunto is trying to increase interest in developing their platform. Or at the very least, it’s meant to make it more appealing to the hobbyist to get hands-on with creating apps.
Other new apps:
Now, in addition to the developer-focused stuff, they’ve also highlighted a few new apps they’ve recently released. That’s right:
Tennis Pro: Can track scores/scores within a tennis match:
The Beer Mile: Perhaps there is nothing better than listening to a Finnish person explain the concept and strategy of how the beer mile works, in the most direct way possible, without a smile or a laugh. Well done. You can watch that at 12:01 in Suunto’s video.
Hex Hunter: This is the conversion of destinations (long term), with GPS on your Suunto watch.
In any case, I keep coming back to the beer mile definition. And, knowing Janne and the Suunto Finnish team, I definitely wouldn’t challenge him for the Beer Mile. You will almost certainly win. Strongly.
Finish:
It’s great to see Suunto expanding its reach in this way. Specifically, the ability to do things without signing up for another account or service. We saw them do the same thing a few months back with their Suunto RoutePlanner site, which is available to anyone (non-Suunto users alike) to create shipping routes from any device in the world. No account required, it’s functional, complete with heatmap access and more.
As for Suunto’s app pieces, making it easy for the hobbyist to build apps is a big step towards expanding apps. It might sound like a small thing, but the difference between someone just downloading this and playing around (and creating something really cool), versus having a gate kept between walls is huge. Even if those walls weren’t that tall, it’s the thought of walls that keeps people away. Now that the barrier is pretty much gone.
Cool stuff, and as I said recently, most of the changes we’ve seen at Suunto over the last year or so have been consumer friendly. With that, thanks for reading!
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