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Comment by hparadiz | Hacker News Reader

Outside of the valley most people have still have never heard of Peloton. In contrast Apple is a house hold name.

100% not true. I live about as far away as you can get (Southeast) from SF and lots of people have Pelotons. Even my mom in her 60s has heard of it.

Man you live in a bubble if you think nobody has heard of Peloton "outside of the valley". wow.

But the Peloton people are more fanatical than the Apple people, especially lately after years of missteps and apple products no longer "just" working.

Also there are people who workout who use Android phones.

What he's saying is Peloton's market share and brand awareness is minuscule compared to Apple's. It's not about fanaticism. A minuscule market inhibits manufacturing savings at scale. They may be better off working with already-established players such as Apple and Fitbit. Creating their own fitness tracking market is going to be a tough slog.

With the ridiculous cost of the bikes and all their other workout equipment, I think they're probably correct in thinking their customers aren't the most price conscious

You make an excellent point. It enables them to create a "workout platform" where all their products interface directly with their fitness tracker. Their customers presumably wouldn't mind wearing a separate Peloton fitness tracker while working out whereupon they could then upload their data to their phone if they so desire. Then they can move all the multi-device interaction complexity to a single product line, the fitness tracker, and the reset of their portfolio only needs to interact with a single product - the fitness tracker. This actually makes a lot of sense.

The bike price isn't that ridiculous for a quality spinning bike. I paid nearly as much for my Keiser bike. It's the $39/month fee that's expensive... That's almost $500/yr.

That $39/month permits several users and access to a lot of fitness classes beyond just the bike. If you've ever hired a personal trainer at a gym or paid for gym classes, you've almost certainly spent more than $39/month, and certainly more than that if it wasn't just for you.

If you just use it for the cycling classes and for yourself, it's probably not a great deal (financially). But if you also do the HIIT, running, yoga, strength, etc. classes and you (like many people) are a bit more consistent with a coach (even a virtual one) than working out by yourself, it can be worth it.

I pay $14.99 for the standalone Peloton app, which also lets me do all of of those classes. And if Peloton raises the price of that app to where I think it's too expensive, I can move to another one without losing all of my fitness tracking history since I track that with my Garmin watch.

Its well known outside. One of the most famous riders of it has created problems with network security.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/biden-peloton...

Its certainly a certain set of people who are most familiar with them - but that's not a "valley" vs "outside the valley" thing.

> Peloton was popular before the pandemic with a wealthy subset of home exercisers, but with the quarantine, it has become something of a phenomenon in a certain socioeconomic bracket. There are Peloton message boards (“Joe Biden has a Peloton,” Peloton Forum reported this week), and the company’s celebrity instructors have huge followings on Facebook and Instagram.

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