All that data is useless unless it gets stashed somewhere-and MapMyFitness is Under Armour’s new data center.Īlready, MapMyFitness connects with some 400 hardware devices-like the Sync Burn activity tracker I’ve been testing for the past few months. “They don’t start to make money until they start selling hardware,” Dickinson said.īut what’s really valuable is the data that those devices generate-GPS route maps, speed measurements, heart-rate zones and calories burned. One of its retail partners, Mio Global, a maker of heart-rate monitors, said in a recent interview with ReadWrite that hardware was a powerful driver of revenues for fitness-app makers like MapMyFitness. But an equally powerful way it makes money is by selling hardware, apparel and other accessories. MapMyFitness has some 20 million users, some of whom pay for premium subscriptions. MapMyFitness’s “open technology platform” helps them do that, Callahan says. Under Armour is “looking to help all kinds of athletes,” says MapMyFitness cofounder Kevin Callahan. Instead, expect to see Under Armour become a data hub for a host of other fitness apps and gadgets-one that reaches far beyond Under Armour’s core audience. In other words, don’t expect a host of Under Armour-branded wearables out of this deal. Where Nike offers a vertically integrated stack of hardware, software, and services, Under Armour has just bought itself an open platform for digital fitness, a new direct sales channel, and a new way to stay present in its customers’ daily lives. Under Armour, the Baltimore-based exercise-clothing company, announced Thursday that it will buy Austin, Texas-based app maker MapMyFitness for $150 million, marking one of the first big deals in the quantified-self space.Īlready, people are making comparisons to Nike, UnderArmour’s archival, which makes its own fitness-tracking apps and wearable hardware, like the Nike FuelBand. ReadWriteBody is an ongoing series where ReadWrite covers networked fitness and the quantified self.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |