Will it? I doubt it, honestly.

Huish, the makers of this app, own the majority of big names in the industry. The reason it’s called Oceanic+ is because they own Oceanic. Along with Apollo, Bare, Ollis, Zeagle and a few others. Interestingly, they don’t believe enough in this app to brand it Suunto, their existing dive watch brand.

My fear is the next Suunto watch will have subscriptions, if this app proves successful.

To my knowledge Suunto is owned by Anta Sports / Amer sports. Huish is the U.S. distributor for Suunto. Or did I miss something?

Apparently it's no longer Amer sports, according to https://www.divenewswire.com/huish-outdoors-named-distributo...

Honestly it seems more like a partnership than a distribution agreement. Huish's website (https://www.huishoutdoors.com/suunto/) and the press release itself make it sound like Suunto Outdoors is another brand like the others Huish actually owns, so I'm not confident where they stand. I always assumed Huish owned Suunto given their own site's materials.

Garmin and Suunto already have dive computers with full smart watch capabilities. Most importantly without a subscription model to use the features.

Those are like $1200 though; same price as Apple Watch Ultra with 5 years of scuba subscription; and have substantially worse displays, ergonomics, and smart watch UX. I went diving with a friend wearing a Suunto smart dive computer, and he couldn’t figure out how to silence the smart watch notifications because the UX was poor; I’ll never have that kind of issue with Apple device.

To me, it seems that your friend was too lazy to read the manual rather than poor UX.

“read the manual” is part of the UX.

There’s a huge market for the Fenix/Epix/Descent line from Garmin, which has always been (much!) more expensive than an Apple Watch. The fitness features and general activity tracking on those is far, far better than what you get from an Apple Watch. The UX is amazing, especially when you’re underwater/wearing thick gloves/running hard. The screens are adequate, if you really want super bright punchy colors you can get that but you’ll pay for it in worse battery life. Oh, and also air integration.

True! I’m speaking as a consumer who was considering several $1200+ options actively - like, I had the tabs open and a Notion DB to catalog the pros and cons of different options. But once I saw the news about the Apple Watch Ultra, I closed the tabs, deleted the Notion DB, and ordered an Apple Watch. I’d like air integration, but vastly prefer spending $800 on an all-day every-day watch to a $1200 sometimes watch.

The Apple Watch is just too limiting for me. Between the types of activities it can track, the actual feedback during an activity being pretty barebones, the lack of competitions, and the terrible battery life I don’t understand who it’s for.

I really hope it doesn't cause other brands to adopt the "Dive Computer As A Service" model. I like buying products that I actually own. I feel like pressure to push the cost of reliable dive computers down will do more to democratize diving than an app for an expensive smart watch.

Scuba diving is a fundamentally dangerous and expensive hobby. I don't know if this will make a big dent in the cost of a dive. FWIW a snorkel and a pair of fins are pretty cheap. For ~$50 you can have a lot of fun swimming around exploring coastal ecosystems without needing to stress about signals, equipment, safety stops, or any of that stuff. This is a lot closer to democratizing diving than anything else.

Although I am not the biggest fan of subscription models I am not sure pushing the cost down of dive computers will help democratize diving. I can't imagine it's a very cheap hobby to begin with.

Also, a quick glance, dive computers seem to be $400+, many are $1000+. The watch in question is $800 and I feel like people who are into diving aren't the type of people who find an $800 prohibitively expensive.

You can definitely get a solid dive computer for under $400, and the $1000+ are going to have features that won't be present on the Apple Watch Ultra, like air integration, lower depth ratings, etc.

Paying other people to take you diving can get pretty expensive quickly, but the dive professionals themselves generally do not make a lot of money. It is one of those things that people do professionally because they love it, not because it pays well. (Speaking only about recreational diving here, industrial diving is a whole different beast.)

Most people use dive computers in range of 200-300$, so a subscription based 700$ Apple device isn't democratizing anything, it's just bringing rent seeking to another market.