Last week news broke about Tacx being acquired by Garmin.
There are plenty of people in much better positions than me talking about this but I wanted to add my two cents worth to the discussion as well.

As someone who both uses and promotes and sells both brands I have to say I am excited to see what this means. I love my Garmin Fenix 3 (not found a good enough reason to update it to the newest version yet) and my Tacx i-Vortex (although I have not been on it yet this winter). Both products have lasted me many years, are still going strong and still receive support.

The merger will bring many advantages to the market. Garmin is a huge company with global reach, their own manufacturing plants in Asia, regional support centres, global distribution and vast amounts of cash for development and expansion.Tacx has their own manufacturing plants in Europe, good hardware and decent software. So the combination of the two will be advantageous to both Garmin and Tacx customers.

Now, I have to admit, I never really got into the whole social media side of riding. I have never used zwift and I only use the auto upload feature of strava that is integrated with Garmin. I do not get the interest in these platforms. I ride for me and with my friends when they can come out with me - or me with them and leave it at that. But a lot of what I have been reading is how this merger will affect the zwift business. I don't see these companies currently as competitors but there are those out there who believe that zwift will eventually make hardware and also those out there that think people only ride on a trainer to cycle the obviously computer generated 3d worlds against people they can't see and most often don't know. My hope is that the current Tacx Training Software 4 gets a much needed update with the help of the developers from Garmin and continues to offer me real world cycle routes with google streetview support as I want to ride real locations, weather that is in training for a race/event I am going to do or to ride somewhere I have previously been and enjoyed riding. Maybe the two companies will push each other to get better software features and maybe even at some point to compete on hardware.

Anyway, this could be a very exciting merger, I am looking forward to better integration between my cycle computer and trainer, better software and maybe some new hardware, like an improved magnum from Tacx that is integrated with my watch and cycle computer, able to replicate real world terrain for both bike and running.

Just my two cents worth.