The Di2 situation smells like amateur stuff...
Answered
Is it me or this issue illustrates a lack of proactiveness from Hammerhead. Indeed, if the Shimano Di2 obstacle is linked to a new agreement (most likely on intellectual properties clauses), the original agreement must had a termination date. Why wait until its expiration to act on it ??? Someone has been sleeping on the job and we (the customers) are directly impacted.
I bought my Karoo2 a year ago. At that time, I was worried that I could not customize the teeth count of my different cassettes (my Garmin 810 allowed me to do so). Hammerhead's support told me not to worry, that Shimano is the big gorilla and Hammerhead's development roadmap must include software enhancements with the Di2 integration and that I will eventually be able to customize my Di2 teeth count. Well... a year later I am caught with my pants down with no enhancements and today, I am finding that I am also losing the most basic information from my Di2 system.
Did I say amateur stuff ???
This demands a major shake over if customer satisfaction and retention means something to Hammerhead.
The ball is in your camp... champs !
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This is on Shimano, not Hammerhead.
Ray’s post has the context you should be considering before pinning this on Hammerhead:
“The changes come at the request of Shimano. Shimano provided a license agreement whereby Hammerhead was granted permission along with technical details enabling the connecting of the Hammerhead devices with the Di2 system. Hammerhead offered to continue supporting Di2 users with full functionality after the SRAM acquisition, but ultimately, Shimano identified SRAM as a competitor and the contract was terminated at Shimano’s request.”
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That statement doesn’t say enough really for me to come a conclusion as to who’s fault this was. It passes to blame to Shimano, but doesn’t say “HH used powers of hard negotiation to come to a new agreement (pay more for the licence) but came to an impass” … who knows, maybe most HH a users are on eTap group sets.
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so, Shimano terminate a contract due to HH being taken over by SRAM and this is HH's fault? The lawyers at SRAM, if they had done their due diligence would have gone through this contract and would have raised it if it was a risk. The fact that it states that Shimano have deemed SRAM as a competitor means that the contract had some sort of clause in it that may not have been clear. I would guess there would have been negotiations on-going in the background arguing that HH would remain independent even after the take over but Shimano obviously decided the risk was too great to their IP and terminated.
We can't blame HH for this and I'm guessing they couldn't announce it until the negotiations had finished and Shimano would have given them only a short timeframe to remove their IP used under license
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I completely agree that we probably don't see completely in the background.
My "conspiracy" is that Shimano is more likely to notice the visible pressures of SRAM (as evidenced by the developers' answers in this discussion - most of the questions, comments and suggestions for new features were answered in the style of "we put the request in the discussion, but at the moment we are fully dedicated to the integration of AXS systems ... " Despite SRAM's claim that Karoo will not interfere in the development and functionality ... So Shimano could evaluate that SRAM wants the Karoo to be their "private" cycling computer, where, of course, there will be maximum pressure to connect to AXS SRAM systems. Shimano probably doesn't like it and won't, so he probably launched a "counterattack" with cutting off his Di2 systems. So even though we probably don't see anyone completely involved in the background, it may not be primarily Shimano's fault, but it may be the result of SRAM's visible efforts to "push" AXS ...
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Hi All, This is a Shimano led decision based on contract terms. We remain hopeful in pursuit of a new path to provide more software features to Shimano riders in the years ahead. Hammerhead has reached out to Shimano, however at this time there is no action from Shimano to allow Di2 compatibility in the future. If you’d like to help our efforts in building a new relationship, please feel free to reach out to Shimano Support and voice your concern
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@ali
Thats your job, we are consumers that for whatever reason have lost functionality of a key part of the offer. This is no longer the product I purchased, in good faith and on a promise of further forward development not significant downgrades.
If I buy a component in a car its integral like Di2 functions on your device ( as sold ), if that stops working because of some mis understood agreement or negotiation that without any question is in the car markers court.
This is your issue to resolve, not ours. Your reputation and trust in your product is at stake here.
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Shimano owns this one, it's pretty clear. It's their IP for the proprietary features and if they pull the plug on the contract, then there is little Hammerhead can do. They're in the driver seat on this sort of thing and there is pretty much nothing the other party (in this case Hammerhead) has available to them for leverage.
I've spent an entire engineering career in semiconductors, and tech product development. I've seen more contracts like this than I could count. Don't know the specifics here, but this is the behavior I would expect from a supplier who feels a competitor breathing down their neck or worse, has just been overtaken or close to being overtaken in a particular important market segment. It's either that or an over caffeinated product manager that needs some adult supervision (probably the most likely, actually).
Wahoo's and Garmin both have similar IP contracts and both now make competitive products in power meters. If this is a corporate strategy, I'd be expecting them to start having their contracts pulled too in the not too distant future. If's it's a corporate strategy, then these two are going to be in the crosshairs shortly and I'd be careful about switching to another bike computer supplier and then to have this happen. If it's an aggressive product manager decision, then you'll see it reversed when Shimano figures out they screwed up.
Ultimately, it's not in Shimano's best interest to do this. It's getting them a lot of flak/negative publicity and the industry experts like Ray Maker are calling it a "dick" move. Right now, if I were looking for a new bike, I'd have to agree with Ray Maker and I'd be looking at something not Shimano for a drivetrain. And presuming that's true, then this is going to be the bigger impact to Shimano than any enrichment to SRAM by selling computers. The question is going to be how long before Shimano comes to their senses.
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John Sievert - Well written and makes sense that shimano is culpable. It is hard to imagine how this move helps them. The consensus of people I ride with is that Sram has a better Di2 system. Is this sour grapes? It also makes me wonder if there was an attempt at a financial shakedown that Hammerhead was unwilling to pay.
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@John Sievert,
I disagree HH owns this, its there product and they are responsible for the integrity of that product and the user experience. Their issues are not our issues, at least they should not be. This should have been assessed, foreseen and planned for thus mitigating,
SRAM knows they are a threat to Shimano. HH has probably over 50% of their market impacted by this change, however HH to Shimano ( with Di2 ) is small change I suspect, my guess >10%. Big blow from Shimano for a small impact on them, all the more reason for that risk to have been flagged when SRAM made the purchase. To me that's an own goal on SRAM/HH part!
I revert to my initial thoughts ( based on UK consumer law )
- Sort it out using commercial/ legals tools available
- Refund users deprived of purchased functions
- Face huge trust and reputational damage and legal actions.
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@Jeremy Blanchard
Then you're in the minority. All of the big industry influencers I've followed lay this solidly at the feet of Shimano.
Ray Maker (DCRainmaker YouTube influencer - 332K subscribers) who is probably the lead market pundit on bike computers says that "At the end of the day, Shimano is being a dick and you as the consumer are basically getting hosed for it." You can watch that here: https://youtu.be/iznFvwOfdjw. As of this writing, that video has more than 65K views.
Shane Miller (GP Lama YouTube Influencer - 171K subscribers) who is right behind Ray Maker for being an industry pundit says even more bluntly, "Shimano what the f**k are you doing?" As of this writing, this video has more than 23K views. You can see that video here: https://youtu.be/iznFvwOfdjwout
That's 500,000 YouTube subscribers - an *amazing* subscriber base in general but especially in the bike enthusiast world - that are getting a healthy dose of "Shimano screwed up." And it's approaching 100K views total between the two. I think one would be hard pressed to call this anything but a marketing disaster for Shimano at this point.
More significantly is that both Maker and Miller directly question what happens next. I think they're right that it is cause for serious concern and their distrust of Shimano is evident. If you have Garmin, Wahoo, or Stages products in the first pass you are probably in trouble. All of those companies have products that compete with Shimano directly. All have power meters that are better positioned in the market than Shimano. Shimano has had a power meter in the past, but recall that they bought out Pioneer's power meters a couple of years ago - so they're serious about competing. The only real expectation one can have is that if you have any one of those products, you can probably expect support for Di2 disappear at some point and probably sooner than later.
Stages have a decent bike computer. Wahoo is second in the bike computer market to Garmin now and they just announced a power meter based on SpeedPlay pedals after they bought SpeedPlay around 2 years ago now. Garmin has a robust family of pedal based power meters. Why would they also not be targets of Shimano?
The traditional way that new profiles have been added to the ANT+ market is for the device profile to be first introduced as a proprietary product such as how the current Di2 support is available with private keys etc... and then once debugged and seen to be stable, it is released as an open ANT+ profile to the ANT+ consortium for all to use. That, in fact, is how Garmin has made the Varia Radar profile available such that a variety of bike computers now support it (Wahoo and Stages being two). That's Garmin - the guys who invented ANT+ and then made it available to the industry at large with the idea it would become a standard. Shimano completely is going against the entire philosophy behind ANT+.
So I get that you're upset but you're taking it out on the wrong guys. Who will you blame when the others begin losing their access to Di2 ANT+ proprietary protocols? It's pretty clear, Shimano owns this. They are getting roundly condemned by all the industry analysts. Then, if you dropped Hammerhead because you're angry at them, you'll then potentially have another set of products that are not supported that you just spent additional money on.
If you want and value connectivity between computers and the various items in your bike "network", you ought to be very concerned about what Shimano is doing. If I were looking for a new bike now, it would not be a Shimano based bike (and I've been a Shimano fanboy for a very long time) because, frankly, Shimano is great at drivetrains but pretty much suck when it comes to anything electronic (drivetrains are predominantly electro-mechanical: big difference) and if they continue with this as a strategy, it would seriously diminish the riding experience. As well, presuming they continue this to Wahoo, Stages and Garmin customers - then that move to one of those products will be just more money wasted. The risk of this is significant (unless they learn from this).
Given the price of bikes today and the extraordinary inflation of price (along with features to some degree), I'm not willing to risk that until Shimano would start to come to their senses. I'll stay away from Shimano until it is clear what they intend to do with their other competitors. Bikes are becoming systems and, as in other industries, if interconnectivity between systems suppliers is poor, everyone suffers including suppliers.
Ray Maker is right, you as the consumer lose big time when a major player starts to act this way. How about they just compete on trying to bring the best features at the best price to market instead of trying to play legalese with their competitors? It's foolish and it's not beneficial. It's like the team that is getting beaten arguing with the refs instead of trying to figure out how to score more points.
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I have been firmly in the Shima-NO camp since Positron so not personally involved, but I still think it would be a good move from Hammerhead to offer return+refund for anybody who really considers this to be a dealbreaker, if it looks like Shimano isn’t budging.
Still, obvious abuse of dominant market position from Shimano, but probably too small potatoes for the competition authorities, especially considering all the different countries involved.
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