from the enshittify-ALL-the-things! dept
We recently noted how device maker Garmin had decided to follow in the footsteps of Google’s Fitbit, and begin putting basic features behind an annoying subscription paywall to goose revenues. Garmin’s new “premium” Garmin+ tier takes several features users already enjoyed for free, put them behind a $7 per month paywall, and called it innovation.
Users are pretty broadly pissed about it. In part because Garmin smartwatches are already significantly more expensive than many brands. And because they’re now paying more money for the same services. And the new services Garmin has added to justify a “premium price” — like a new “AI” assistant — suck.
Speaking on the company’s latest earnings call, Garmin CEO Cliff Pemble responded to questions about the backlash by first lying and claiming that Garmin customers really like the direction Garmin is heading (a five second tour of the Garmin subreddit makes it very clear that’s not true). He then promised that more of this kind of enshittification was definitely coming:
“I think we’ve been saying for a while that we are evaluating opportunities to have a premium offering on Garmin Connect,” Pemble responded. “I think the developments of AI and particularly around AI-based insights for our users was one of those things that we felt was important to recognize the value for the investment that it takes to do.”
Again though, reviews of the “AI” features they’re adding are extremely bad, aren’t as good as other devices or fitness apps, and are often subject to basic math mistakes. Again it appears we’ve taken software and some light LLM automation, thrown the “AI” tag on it, and demanded that consumers both be stunned by the innovation and accept higher prices for existing services.
For a while Garmin differentiated itself from competitors like Fitbit for not doing this kind of predatory bullshit. If you dig through Reddit comments, it’s clear that a lack of subscription paywall is what drew a ton of customers to the brand in the first place.
But now that Garmin has decided to hop on this treadmill of goosing earnings by sucking value out of the free tier, it will never end. Company execs have deluded themselves into thinking this kind of paywalling is innovation, when it’s just mindless extraction and gatekeeping that harms customer loyalty.
Pemble, of course, can’t admit any of this to investors keen on improved quarterly returns at any cost, so it creates both a weird anti-consumer slippery slope, and a sort of willful delusion to prop it up. It also creates a new opportunity for future smart device competitors to make market inroads by not being nickel-and-diming assholes keen on insulting their customers’ intelligence.
Filed Under: ai, apps, enshittification, fitness, garmin premium+, paywalls, smartwatch, tracking
Companies: garmin
