Apple obviously has a stranglehold on the iOS market for smartwatches and Google/Fitbit may make Garmin’s job ever-harder in the Android space as Wear OS grows in 2022. These markets are incredibly competitive and Garmin’s sporting edge over the competition is eroded bit by bit each year. The Venu SQ and Venu 2 signal Garmin’s continued intent to take the smartwatch market seriously and Garmin Lily backs that point up further by attacking the small-wristed, mostly-female market squarely. The regular format 955 absolutely already exists and will come in 2022 but not until at least the spring and maybe as late as Q3. The big move for high-end running tech in 2022 will, for sure, be AMOLED. There are realistic chances of Garmin releasing a new version of just about any of their existing models. Good intel says that Garmin were ready to release new products in the run up to Christmas 2021 but were hit by chip shortages If you analyse previous release cycles, a LOT of Garmin products were due for a refresh in 2021. Nothing new will now be released until January and then we can expect a bumper year of new sports tech, providing Omicron Covid doesn’t further skew supply chains. No new Garmin sports watches and even Apple struggled to get Watch 7 on the shelves.
The general trend is one of the iterative releases of bike computers and sports/fitness watches where technical components are updated and, usually, one major new software feature is introduced at the same time as the new sports device.
The full list of everything, past & future is towards the end of this post. To cut a very long story short, hopes for new tech are pushed to January 2022 and, in many cases, it will be even later ie the start of H2.2022.
Add to that R&D delays caused by remote working or Covid-related staff absentees then the products are simply not there to be released in anything like the numbers that were expected at the start of 2021. It soon became apparent that even the likes of Apple and Garmin had supply chain issues.
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