I had a comic feeling watching yesterday’s announcement of the Apple Watch Ultra: I’ve seen this amusement before. It wasn’t until Garmin ticker fans connected Reddit and Twitter started lampooning Apple that it deed me… this is Nokia each implicit again.

Let’s get this retired of the mode first: I’m a longtime Garmin ticker fan. Most of my friends and household person each purchased svelte Apple Watches. It’s a large smartwatch but I wanted a large outdoor escapade and fittingness ticker to brace with my iPhone instead. That’s wherefore I’ve been wearing large hulking Garmin watches similar the Fenix and Epix bid contempt their clumsy bundle interfaces. I’ve utilized them to obsessively way and measurement my show successful a assortment of activities that see kitesurfing, way running, golfing, value training, and upland biking.

Steve Jobs pointing retired the marketplace leaders astatine the motorboat of the iPhone successful 2007.

When Apple launched the iPhone successful 2007, it was met with derision by Nokia and its fans inactive clinging to their overwrought Symbian OS, tiny keyboards, and resistive touchscreens made of plastic. Nokia devices similar the N95 were superior to the iPhone connected spec sheets, but not successful presumption of usability. Apple’s slow-roll attack to adding caller features twelvemonth aft twelvemonth yet allowed the institution to drawback up to flagship specs offered by Nokia, BlackBerry, Motorola, and Palm arsenic each institution hemorrhaged marketplace stock and revenue. The concern lone accelerated with the maturation of Google’s Android OS which overtook Symbian by 2011. Nokia’s telephone part was sold to Microsoft successful 2014 and past unloaded for parts successful 2016.

Garmin has a dizzying array of watches sold astatine each terms point, to $1,500 and beyond.

It was this script I was reasoning astir arsenic the Apple Watch Ultra was unveiled with a terms good beneath the $1,000 people galore expected, and conscionable a period aft Samsung announced the $449.99 Galaxy Watch 5 Pro moving Google’s overmuch improved Wear OS 3. (Ironically, Wear OS is infused with Tizen DNA which evolved from Nokia’s ain Maemo and MeeGo OSes.)

Apple already dominates the smartwatch marketplace for devices that outgo little than $500. Garmin dominates the conception supra that with premium outdoor watches priced from $699 to implicit $1,500. Its higher mean selling terms is the crushed it ranks 3rd successful presumption of revenue contempt ranking 5th successful presumption of instrumentality shipments, according to Counterpoint Research. That’s the other of the iPhone which dominates the premium extremity of the smartphone market. Apple is intelligibly bare for a bigger portion of the premium smartwatch pastry with its much lucrative nett margins.

Apple tried selling costly watches earlier with the terribly misguided Watch Edition bid that attempted to usage precious materials to inflate the price. This clip it’s selling much invaluable features and functionality to a caller assemblage of hardcore athletes. By pricing the archetypal procreation of the Ultra astatine $799, Apple has a batch of ceiling to rotation retired caller Ultra editions successful the years up that disagree successful features and capabilities. I’d readily wage much conscionable to person Apple’s caller emergency SOS outer messaging connected my wrist successful summation to cellular data truthful that I tin permission my telephone (or Garmin InReach) down erstwhile moving distant trails oregon kitesurfing disconnected the seashore of the Western Sahara. Garmin, for example, sells a dizzying array of watches astatine each imaginable terms constituent that sometimes disagree lone somewhat successful capabilities.

Garmin’s high-end watches similar the Epix 2 person OLED displays, multi-frequency GPS, and touchscreens with built-in topographical maps that see way names and adjacent skis slopes. Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

Without a doubt, the Apple Watch Ultra comes up abbreviated connected a spec examination with likewise priced devices sold by Garmin, Coros, and others. The artillery is the astir glaring example: 36, oregon adjacent 60 hours enabled by a aboriginal low-power update, is anemic successful a class wherever batteries are measured successful weeks. Out of the container it besides lacks things similar built-in topographical maps needed for trails, oregon enactment for Bluetooth powerfulness meters and cadence sensors utilized by cyclists. Apple’s athletics features and analytics besides airy successful examination to the extent and assortment offered by the competition.

But Apple has an fantabulous app ecosystem by examination to offset immoderate inequalities, and it already makes the champion smartwatch for iPhone owners funny successful casual fittingness and health. Now it brings those aforesaid features — positive amended mics, louder speaker, and a siren — to superior outdoor athletes, immoderate of whom volition undoubtedly beryllium swayed by the Ultra’s entreaty arsenic a seemingly good-enough multisport ticker (with eSim for cellular data!) that’s besides a large smartwatch with a silky-smooth interface. We’ll person to hold for the reviews to spot however bully (or bad) it truly is.

I tin accidental this already though: Garmin’s biggest anemic spot is usability. Its high-end watches person tons of features and capabilities that are obscured by analyzable bundle that feels, astatine times, similar operating a technological calculator. Apple excels astatine idiosyncratic interfaces, Garmin doesn’t, conscionable similar Nokia which struggled successful vain to accommodate Symbian successful effect to the iPhone and Android. And fixed capable time, Apple’s watches volition drawback up to the specs and features disposable connected Garmin’s flagship watches.

In the abbreviated term, however, the added attraction Apple brings to the rugged outdoor smartwatch abstraction could payment Garmin — its banal was up implicit 3 percent yesterday. But if Nokia taught america anything, it’s this: erstwhile Apple chooses to participate your location (and Google gets its location successful order) you’d amended combat similar hellhole oregon hole to determination on. Let’s spot however Garmin chooses to respond.