The title might not make sense to you unless you are a cyclist. So I’ll help you with that. Starting with the players in this story:
- Shimano: Shimano is a company that is widely known for two things. Fishing equipment and cycling parts. In terms of the latter, they are the world’s largest cycling parts company on the planet. Most of the race teams at the top of the sport use their parts. And I use their parts on my race bike.
- Hammerhead: They make cycling computers that are used by many out there including the Israel Premier Tech cycling team. And one of their investors is the four time Tour de France winner Chris Froome who happens to race for that team. They were recently bought by SRAM who is the second largest cycling parts company on the planet. Keep that in mind as I tell this story.
With that out of the way, here’s the story. Most cycling computers have some sort of integration between them and the Shimano Di2 electronic shifting system which I happen to own on my bike. You can use your cycling computer to see the battery status of the Di2 system, see what gear your in, as well as use some buttons on the brake levers of my bike to switch screens on my computer without taking my hands off the handlebars. In fact, Shimano advertises this integration here. Now Hammerhead was one of those companies who had a licensing agreement with Shimano to do this integration. But that ended today when Shimano terminated their licensing agreement. That means that after a upcoming firmware update that is due in June, Hammerhead users won’t have access to this info unless they buy another cycling computer. Here’s what Hammerhead had to say:
THE ADJUSTMENTS COME ON THE REQUEST OF SHIMANO. SHIMANO OFFERED A LICENSE SETTLEMENT WHEREBY HAMMERHEAD WAS GRANTED PERMISSION TOGETHER WITH TECHNICAL PARTICULARS ENABLING THE CONNECTING OF THE HAMMERHEAD UNITS WITH THE DI2 SYSTEM. HAMMERHEAD PROVIDED TO PROCEED SUPPORTING DI2 CUSTOMERS WITH FULL PERFORMANCE AFTER THE SRAM ACQUISITION, HOWEVER IN THE END, SHIMANO RECOGNIZED SRAM AS A COMPETITOR AND THE CONTRACT WAS TERMINATED AT SHIMANO’S REQUEST.”
As an aside, the article that I linked to talks about how this integration works, and why Shimano can act like this. If you really want to go into the weeds, I’d give this article a read. But back to the topic at hand. So let’s boil this down to the relevant facts:
- SRAM who competes with Shimano buys Hammerhead.
- Shimano terminates their licensing agreement with Hammerhead because they are owned by SRAM and compete against Shimano.
That pretty much sums it up. The thing is that this is pretty short sighted by Shimano as they’ve just angered every Hammerhead owner on planet Earth, and I am going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of them will get SRAM parts on their next bike rather than Shimano parts just to get that integration. It’s also going to make anyone who doesn’t own a Hammerhead computer and who wants to buy a Shimano equipped bike think twice about doing so.
But there’s more. I own this Garmin cycling computer which has this integration. Will Shimano go after Garmin, or Bryton, or Stages, or any other company that makes a cycling computer that has this level of integration? My guess is no. But I am hedging on that as Shimano bought Pioneer’s cycling division a while back. That included getting access to Pioneer’s cycling computers. Thus if Shimano is thinking of coming out with their own cycling computers, I can see them trying to take out anyone who uses this integration to make the Shimano offering look better. Though I will point out that if Shimano tries this with Garmin, Shimano will get destroyed as Garmin is a much bigger company with much deeper pockets.
The bottom line is that this is a PR disaster by Shimano. I get why they thought they had to do this, but it’s still a dumb move. Shimano would do well to find a way to walk this back and do so quickly as this really doesn’t look good.
UPDATE: A quick browse Twitter shows the PR disaster in progress for Shimano:
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This entry was posted on May 26, 2022 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hammerhead, Shimano. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Shimano Bullies Hammerhead Into Removing Support For Di2 In Their Cycling Computers
The title might not make sense to you unless you are a cyclist. So I’ll help you with that. Starting with the players in this story:
With that out of the way, here’s the story. Most cycling computers have some sort of integration between them and the Shimano Di2 electronic shifting system which I happen to own on my bike. You can use your cycling computer to see the battery status of the Di2 system, see what gear your in, as well as use some buttons on the brake levers of my bike to switch screens on my computer without taking my hands off the handlebars. In fact, Shimano advertises this integration here. Now Hammerhead was one of those companies who had a licensing agreement with Shimano to do this integration. But that ended today when Shimano terminated their licensing agreement. That means that after a upcoming firmware update that is due in June, Hammerhead users won’t have access to this info unless they buy another cycling computer. Here’s what Hammerhead had to say:
THE ADJUSTMENTS COME ON THE REQUEST OF SHIMANO. SHIMANO OFFERED A LICENSE SETTLEMENT WHEREBY HAMMERHEAD WAS GRANTED PERMISSION TOGETHER WITH TECHNICAL PARTICULARS ENABLING THE CONNECTING OF THE HAMMERHEAD UNITS WITH THE DI2 SYSTEM. HAMMERHEAD PROVIDED TO PROCEED SUPPORTING DI2 CUSTOMERS WITH FULL PERFORMANCE AFTER THE SRAM ACQUISITION, HOWEVER IN THE END, SHIMANO RECOGNIZED SRAM AS A COMPETITOR AND THE CONTRACT WAS TERMINATED AT SHIMANO’S REQUEST.”
As an aside, the article that I linked to talks about how this integration works, and why Shimano can act like this. If you really want to go into the weeds, I’d give this article a read. But back to the topic at hand. So let’s boil this down to the relevant facts:
That pretty much sums it up. The thing is that this is pretty short sighted by Shimano as they’ve just angered every Hammerhead owner on planet Earth, and I am going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of them will get SRAM parts on their next bike rather than Shimano parts just to get that integration. It’s also going to make anyone who doesn’t own a Hammerhead computer and who wants to buy a Shimano equipped bike think twice about doing so.
But there’s more. I own this Garmin cycling computer which has this integration. Will Shimano go after Garmin, or Bryton, or Stages, or any other company that makes a cycling computer that has this level of integration? My guess is no. But I am hedging on that as Shimano bought Pioneer’s cycling division a while back. That included getting access to Pioneer’s cycling computers. Thus if Shimano is thinking of coming out with their own cycling computers, I can see them trying to take out anyone who uses this integration to make the Shimano offering look better. Though I will point out that if Shimano tries this with Garmin, Shimano will get destroyed as Garmin is a much bigger company with much deeper pockets.
The bottom line is that this is a PR disaster by Shimano. I get why they thought they had to do this, but it’s still a dumb move. Shimano would do well to find a way to walk this back and do so quickly as this really doesn’t look good.
UPDATE: A quick browse Twitter shows the PR disaster in progress for Shimano:
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This entry was posted on May 26, 2022 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hammerhead, Shimano. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.