Originally Posted by
Ogsarg
At some point it just becomes easier to put a cycling app on your phone and ditching the computer altogether.
Many people already do that.
Even with that, Garmin, Wahoo, and Hammerhead see a market for cycling-specific devices.
Smartphones took a way a lot of the market for car GPS units. They took some of the market for cycling GPS but I don't think it was as large a fraction.
One thing that kept cycling-specific head units going was that most sensors used ANT+, which was not well supported by smartphones. BT sensors make smartphones much more practical as replacements.
Smartphones capable enough have existed for long enough to basically destroy the cycling GPS market but they haven't managed to do that yet.
So, there have to still be things that cycling-specific devices are better for cycling use than cell phones.
One of those is screens: smart phone screens don't work that well in bright sunlight and they consume too much power. Smartphones are also designed for short term use (not running things for hours). Smartphones are also much bigger than many people want to have on their handlebar.