We’ve got two sports tech news items hitting today, both with a Finnish connection. First up is news about Suunto continuing to dismantle said Finnish connection, and then after that there’s news of Wahoo joining up with Finnish brand Oura, maker of Oura rings.
Suunto Announces Further Finnish Layoffs:
According to an article published this morning by the largest daily newspaper in Finland, Suunto plans to lay off the majority of remaining staff in Finland, and continue consolidating functions in China, via its owners since 2022 – Liesheng. HS (the newspaper) reports that Suunto had 160 people in Finland, and on Monday the company notified 118 of those that their jobs may be lost. Suunto (pre-acquisition) had moved most of its less expensive watch manufacturing to China, and then that followed in 2024 with moving all sports watch manufacturing to China.
Since then, the Liesheng has shifted virtually all Suunto software development to China, as well as most other functions. That has resulted in Suunto actually delivering frequent software updates on a predictable quarterly-ish update schedule. While many of these features are mostly catch-up to their competitors, this was a massive change from the previous decade, which saw on-again/off-again progress in terms of making competitive products.
While 2024 and 2025 saw Suunto deliver a number of strong watch contenders at very good prices, since this summer Suunto has taken an oddly different tack – specifically around pricing. They launched the Suunto Run 2 at $349USD, substantially higher than the $249 the previous Suunto Run 1 was launched at (especially given it was originally billed as Suunto’s entry-level/budget watch). This price wasn’t completely a deal-killer given the more premium materials twist. But the real head-scratcher was the recent Suunto Race 3S, which was bafflingly priced at $599USD, a 70% price increase over the previous Suunto Race S unit (it also shifted to more premium materials). All while falling far short of the much less expensive COROS Pace 4 Pro that was launched a week prior. Point being, pricing shifts may be joining workforce shifts.
Having been around Suunto a long-long time, nearly all of the people I knew who had been there for decades are now gone. While Suunto the brand is still making good watches, it’s going to be pretty hard soon to meaningfully call it a Finnish brand. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of non-Finnish sports brands still making great GPS watches. Only time will tell whether Suunto as a brand/name, can stay the course of making good watches, country association aside.
(And as an aside, I was actually wrapping up my written review of the Suunto Run 2, after almost precisely a month of wearing it, when this news hit this morning, so expect that review tomorrow.)
Wahoo Partners with Oura/COROS/Apple Health For Readiness Insights:
Wahoo has joined Zwift in announcing recent integrations with Oura (Zwift did so a week or so ago). Apparently, whoever at Oura is responsible for partner integrations is going for the Christmas bonus this year. This new integration with Wahoo feeds your Oura ring data into their Training Insights feature, allowing you to combine that data with your Wahoo training data.
But Oura isn’t the only one. Both COROS and Apple Health are coming next week. However, Oura is here today, so I’ll show that. First, setting it up is relatively easy. You’ll see a notice at the top that you can connect Oura, simply tap that, and a few seconds later you’re done.
From there on the main dashboard, you’ll see the Recovery Response metric populated. This isn’t a direct metric from Oura, but rather a calculated score by Wahoo. In this case,
If I were to tap that, I’m brought to a different dashboard that shows a bit more of my sleep details, including last night’s sleep, last night’s HRV, and last night’s resting HR. Along with both temperature and respiration rate. For SpO2, I didn’t have that toggled in the Oura app (it’s a manual toggle). Currently, when I tap on any of the metrics for more details, it shows that a historical chart is coming soon.
For the mental capacity bit, that’s a short game/test you take over 90 seconds, typing when a color square shows up, how many milliseconds it takes you to respond to it. Since I just started that fun today, it takes 3 days of anxiety-inducing tapping to light up that scorecard.
For the specifics, here are some extra tidbits from Wahoo:
Data imported from Oura: HRV (rMSSD), resting heart rate and sleep (time asleep), plus blood oxygen (SpO2), respiratory rate and body temperature as illness markers. Readiness and sleep need are calculated by Wahoo, not imported from Oura. When Recovery Response is elevated, My Readiness flags the anomaly to the athlete.
Integration: One-way, with data flowing from Oura to Wahoo.
Compatibility: All generations of the Oura ring. An active Oura membership is required.
Historical data: When connecting, athletes can import up to 90 days of Oura data, so My Readiness has a personal baseline from day one.
Training history: My Readiness uses every workout in the athlete’s Wahoo App history, whichever device or platform recorded it.
In any case, as for COROS & Apple Health, those are again slated to light up on Tuesday the 17th (November). So I’ll give those a poke then.
With that – thanks for reading!
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