> the data was never mined for anything Oh I wasn't implying what's generally seen as "data mining". But for such a company to offer many of the features in th

> the data was never mined for anything Oh I wasn't implying what's generally seen as "data mining". But for such a company to offer many of the features in the paid services they need that data. They don't have to sell it to others, they only have to sell it back to the users as added services even included in the price of the hardware itself. Those added services can be as simple as sync between multiple phones or sharing on social media, or premium features like advanced analytics. On the other hand this kind of data can be also sold entirely anonymized. Strava does this and many cities' urban planners buy the data to understand better how the city infrastructure is used by the people (running, cycling, etc.) and how to develop it. I'm not saying there's no value in it, just that without it the value of the product decreases significantly. So it's in the manufacturer's best interest to have it as part of the basis of their offering.