Today I’ve got two tidbits in the sports tech world on the Garmin front that I thought were notable. Both happened over the last few days. So, let’s dive right into it.
Garmin’s Moxy Acquisition:
(Above, an older Moxy sensor next to a Garmin chest strap pod for size scale)
Garmin has acquired Moxy, the muscle oxygen sensor company. But I’d argue the acquisition has some notable backstory to it, with the two companies seemingly in a friends-with-benefits relationship for more than a decade.
First though, Garmin has indeed confirmed the acquisition, stating simply:
“Garmin can confirm its acquisition of Moxy Monitor, but we have no further comment at this time.”
That short of a statement is actually quite unusual for Garmin, which makes numerous acquisitions each year. Most of the time they issue a press release with a bit of hype for the acquired company, some executive statements, and then some wording that states everyone at the acquired company has places within Garmin. Concurrently, the acquired company then issues their own e-mails to existing customers staying some variant of “all is good for now, stay the course”. This pattern is tried and true for Garmin, such as recently with the Garmin acquisition of TrainingPeaks.
But this time…oddly nothing.
I’m not yet sure what to make of that shortness, but in the meantime, a few historical notables. Though less historical, here’s what a Moxy sensor looks like these days, taken last summer at Eurobike:
Moxy has been around quite some time, and actually has quite a close relationship with Garmin and historically with ANT+ (which Garmin owns/owned). Moxy first announced with early ANT+ support back in January 2014, and then was featured at the ANT+ Symposium in September 2014 when Garmin announced the existence of Connect IQ. Then just months later Moxy was featured as the first Connect IQ app on Garmin watches. Followed by a year later, Moxy actually got their Muscle Oxygen profile through ANT+ certification, and directly onto Garmin watches (no Connect IQ app required). That was a big deal at the time, when new profiles onto new devices was basically unheard of. All the while Moxy was battling it out with BSX for the muscle oxygen realm, albeit that didn’t last long as BSX folded (and Moxy stepped-in to offer deals for BSX users).
From that point forward, Moxy slowly shifted more towards coaches and academic usage, rather than focusing on consumers directly. Certainly, consumers could purchase their devices, but that wasn’t really the focus area. For the most part, Moxy just continued to build a stable business without crazy amounts of flair.
And for those that know Roger Schmitz (seen below), the CEO and founder behind Moxy – that’s always been the case. He’s an easy going guy focused on science and fitness, and less on frills and marketing. Probably one of the nicest guys in sports tech. The sensor package costs exactly the same as it did back in 2018 (for real, I just looked up the prices in my old pieces), though the device has improved a bit here and there every few years with slightly updated versions. All of this is of course is at relatively small production levels. They certainly aren’t making 50,000 devices per year.
(The above is Roger and I in 2014 at the ANT+ Symposium, where he had convinced me to suffer during a test. Also, I’m apparently 12 years old. And while I could have found a nicer/better/newer photo, I feel like this nostalgic photo is a bit of a fun test of your sports tech founder knowledge. Points awarded if you can name them all. The rest of the photos from that day are here.)
Which then probably gets back to what Garmin might be planning here. I suspect this is two-part. First, as with any number of other sports tech sensors, pieces that used to be only possible in larger form factors can now be placed in much smaller wearables (wrist or elsewhere). Perhaps with Garmin’s advanced manufacturing capabilities, there’s some possibilities for smaller-scale muscle oxygen sensor designs. And with that, more scale given Garmin’s distribution abilities.
Likewise, and probably more likely, acquiring Moxy effectively combats someone like Whoop acquiring Moxy for the patents. I’d have to guess that Whoop would be the primary entity interested in Moxy, and given Whoop’s propensity to sue other companies these days, the preventative cost to acquire Moxy would almost certainly be cheaper than the legal cost to defend something down the road. Plus, see the next section in this post.
What happens to the Moxy user base now remains an outstanding question. Again, it’s very unlike Garmin to not issue a press release, let alone have the acquiring company assure their own user base. The good news, though for the Moxy user base is that the device isn’t dependent on some server platform somewhere, unless they were using the Moxy Portal. But Moxy themselves (during the purchasing phase) give you a dozen other options, some of which are totally free (and very advanced). But again, there’s nothing to say that Garmin is shutting that down today (or ever).
In any case, I figured a quick post was worthwhile in the long 12+ year arc of me covering Moxy from inception to…well…retirement?
Garmin Gets Sued For Funsies:
Welcome to Friday, which is just like any other day of the week that Garmin gets sued on. Like most big companies in America, Garmin gets sued for all manner of things, with the vast majority of these suits being quickly dismissed. Most of the time, it’s patent trolls, and occasionally, it’s individuals that believe they’ve been wronged (and sometimes, they have).
This past Friday though, a mildly interesting patent suit came forth. This one from a company/patent owner that has made this claim before (IOENGINE), against a wide number of much larger companies, including PayPal, Imation, Ingenico, Roku, and now both Samsung and Garmin. I’m sure they’ve sued others as well. At a basic level, many of the claims follow typical patent troll behavior. The most notable case here was the PayPal one (1:18-cv-00452), which stretched on for nearly 8 years before IOEngine lost on virtually every count, and then had the remainder dismissed.
But IOENGINE is trying again.
Now, the rough claim here in both the new Garmin & Samsung cases is centered around a 2004-era patent that covers how to tunnel data between two points. It’s literally so broad that the suit covers all sorts of random scenarios, like picking a Fenix E and a Fenix 5 as the two main examples of infringement, and then from there cites totally random data sync examples such as copying Physio TrueUp data from a device to Garmin Connect. It’s kinda all over the place.
(Also, this is the first time ever the Fenix E has been chosen for anything, so I’m guessing it feels pretty excited even if its name is being used in vain.)
For those geeks in the crowd, here’s the main claim of infringement:
At a high level, the above would best be described as “this is how computing works”.
As with many things in the patent lawsuit realm these days, it’s mind-boggling that you could even have a patent for such a basic premise. But they must be really confident in having something special here. After all, as broad as this claim is, it could be applied to just about any company in theory. Why on earth they’d choose Garmin (or even Samsung) to fight is beyond me, given how successful Garmin is in countering patent-troll lawsuits. But hey, here we are.
In any case, I’ve flagged this one to watch. As always, Garmin has gotten more and more entertaining in their court-filed rebuttals over the past year. As evidenced by the Suunto smack-down and countersuit from earlier this year (that case continues to plod along, in case you were curious). Certainly Garmin’s lawyers might have their reasons for that TGIF legal flair, I suspect a key piece of expanding their rebuttals to be as strong as they are, is to publicly dissuade others from filing lawsuits. As much fun as it might be for Garmin’s lawyers to play whack-a-mole, the reality is, it costs a lot of money and time.
With that, thanks for reading!
0 Commentaires