Build Your Own Suunto Watch App

This is a new one, and sort of exciting to think about. DC Rainmaker with the story (who else!):

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.

This is cool and there’s a lot that can be said about the business strategy behind it: bring developers onto the platform with the least amount of friction, they create fun apps, this creates interest by the users, which helps grow the business… iPhone iPhone something something.

But, what I find more interesting is the creative perspective. Could a race director build a custom app? A trail media business? What would a custom app for a watch look like? What would it do? How would it differentiate itself? Oh, what a fun playground to think about.