In the meantime, I’ll poke them on why the app isn’t available there.

Thanks for the comments!

I wouldn’t necessarily tie REI’s stocking to others. I know that most distributors heard sometime very late March, early April (which is how it leaked out across the internet). Mid-2012 wouldn’t have made any sense, far too early. Distributors would never be told that early, as it would have easily leaked out then. Almost every leak you see out there today in the sports technology world comes from distributors/retailers posting pricing information.

Each company decides what to stock. For example, Clever Training could certainly stock the silver version if they wanted. It’s just a matter of them requesting it to be sent over, it’s available from their upstream distributors (I realize your example is REI, but I can’t speak for their thoughts).

At this point though, most retailers I talk to are simply trying to get rid of the Ambit1′s and get them out before they become any more undesirable than they already are. :-/

Which, just to edit/add that I’m not absolving Suunto of blame here. Just providing perspective on the retailer side of things.

However, I did note that Polar has released a Bluetooth Stride Sensor (US & Canada only at this stage). Looks like they may be glacially moving to open (as opposed to private) standards?

Time again to go annoy the Polar twitter, e-mail, etc. folks about that release to NZ App Store!