Suunto has announced today they’re now allowing anyone to create apps on their watches, even without opening up a partnership account with the company. This allows anybody to download the also newly-available SuuntoPlus Editor extension for Visual Studio, enabling developers to write, test, and publish apps directly to their own watches. Then, if they want to make that available in the larger SuuntoPlus App Store, they can do that.
The key difference
As a casual reminder, Suunto was actually the first watch maker to have on-watch apps – all the way back in 2012. They beat Garmin (2014), Pebble (2014), and Apple (2015) by years, though obviously haven’t quite reached the same popularity as those. Part of that is because while Suunto got an early start on apps back in the 2012 range, they subsequently put the whole concept on ice later in the decade, basically killing off their first App Store. Of course, in 2022, they re-launched with select partners, but it never quite had the same ‘anyone can join in’ camp that the first edition had. This changes that.
Oh, also, Suunto’s announced a few new apps for everyone (non-developers alike), including a critical gap in their lineup: The Beer Mile App. More on that in a second.
Visual Studio Code Extension
First up, Suunto is releasing their StudioPlus Editor extension for Visual Studio. This is nearly identical to what Suunto themselves is using internally, saying it’s “95% the same” as how they develop apps for their platform. Up till now, in order to gain access to this you had to be a full Suunto partner. That wasn’t necessarily a huge/high bar, but it was a bar nonetheless. It meant that practically speaking, hobbyist developers weren’t likely to bother to jump through the hoops (whereas a company with a sensor would).
And as we’ve seen on countless watch app stores, it’s often these hobbyist apps that end up being some of the most popular ones.
Here are the pieces that you can now do without any partner account at all, and then the other steps if you want to escalate, they’ve made those more streamlined and easier:
In any case, Suunto is now on the Visual Studio marketplace, where you can grab the extension there, which includes the simulator feature as well.
Once you’ve got that installed, you’ll be able to create apps, test apps, including simulating with test data and more.
And again, none of this requires a partner account. So that means you’d be limited to publishing it to your own watch, but couldn’t publish it to a friends watch (or, on the internet).
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 to the App Store. This, in turn, gets access to the Suunto Cloud API as well.
From there, you can upload your app into the SuuntoPlus App Store.
All of this seems pretty straightforward and shows Suunto is trying to increase the appeal of developing for their platform. Or at the minimum, aiming to make it more appealing for hobbyist to dabble in creating apps.
Some New Apps:
Now, in addition to the developer-focused items, they’ve also highlighted a few new apps they’ve just published. They are:
Tennis Pro: Can track scoring/points within a Tennis Game:
Beer Mile: There’s perhaps nothing better than listening to a Finnish person explain the concept and strategy of how a beer mile works, in the most factually direct way possible, without so much as a smirk or laugh. Well done. You can watch that at 12:01 in the Suunto video.
Hex Hunter: This is the gamification of going places (over long periods of time), via the GPS on your Suunto watch.
In any case, I’m still back on the beer mile explanation. Also, knowing Janne and the Finnish Suunto crew, I would definitely not challenge him to a Beer Mile. He will almost certainly win. Strongly.
Wrap-Up:
It’s cool to see Suunto expanding out access like this. Specifically, the ability to do things without signing up for yet another account or service. We saw them do the same thing a few months back with their Suunto RoutePlanner site, available to anyone (non-Suunto users alike) to create routes for export to any device on the planet. No account required, just works, complete with heat map access and more.
As for the Suunto app pieces, making it easier for hobbyist to create apps is a huge step towards increasing apps. It may sound trivial, but the difference between someone just casually downloading this and toying around (and creating something super cool), versus having it gate kept between walls is huge. Even if those walls weren’t all that tall to begin with, it’s the thought of the walls that keeps people away. Now that the barrier is mostly gone.
Cool stuff, and as I said recently, most of the changes we’ve seen at Suunto in the last year or so are pretty good for consumers. With that, thanks for reading!
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