A geeky post about GPS products for runners

The Nikkei Weekly this week carried a small story that Casio has released a GPS-enabled watch for runners/cyclists.

   That's good.

It is the world's smallest GPS-enabled watch and looks kind of stylish

   That's pretty good.

It doesn't seem to do much except tell you how far you've gone and your pace (unless you think that calendar and world time functions are important).

   That's bad. Even my $200 Polar HRM pedometer thing does that effectively

It has a battery life of 2 hr or 4.5 hr on low-power mode.

   That's terrible to the point of absurd! (It wouldn't have even completed the Tour de Yamanote on low power mode)

It doesn't have any computer interface capability so far as I can tell.

   That's almost unacceptable (considering the price)

It has a backlight.

   C'mon, I'm struggling to find some more good things

It stores a whopping 50 laps of data.

   Who hoo, break out the party balloons!

It costs 54,000 yen (US$470)

   <Gulp>

Compare this to the Garmin 305

Admittedly the Garmin weighs 13 g (yes, a whole 13 g) more, but offers a heart rate monitor, 10 hrs battery life, ability to download (and upload?) run routes to a computer for display on maps and data analysis, a bunch of user/training functions, 1000 lap memory...and it costs about 25% to almost 50% less (though is NOT available over the counter in Japan).

So, if the Garmin is the standard in the international market place for GPS-enabled watches for runners, what on earth is Casio thinking?  Surely they will not sell a single unit of this over-priced under-specced watch to any remotely international-minded runner! Do they simply consider that the Japanese market is totally isolated from the international market? (Probably yes, and I guess true to a very large extent).

But why are Japanese electronics makers dragging the chain so badly in this kind of product considering the potential size of the market? Even heart rate monitors are very thin on the ground, with Casio being the only serious player that I know of, and even then, that is a relatively recent arrival on the heart rate monitor scene.

And why is Garmin so sluggish in getting its much-coveted products into international markets? (The fact is, most people in other countries, e.g., Australia, are buying the Garmins over the Internet directly from America and thus risking the loss of after-sales service). The 301, the predecesssor to the 305, has been released for about three years, but only recently appears to have become available in Japan (and at an extremely inflated price, if you don't mind).

I wonder what all this means, if anything...