Adidas has Runtastic, Under Armour has MyFitnessPal and Endomondo. The consolidation in the wearables market continues with the Japanese shoe giant ASICS acquiring Runkeeper. The smartphone app was sold late last week; pricing was not disclosed. Runkeeper, with 40 million users, was the last big independent running app, and ASICS was the last big running shoe maker … [Read more...]
About Dan Rosenbaum
Fitbit Introduces a More-Stylish Alta Fitness Tracker
It seems like just last month that Fitbit introduced a new tracker (wait -- it was just last month), but the company is back with another one -- less functional but easier on the eyes. The Alta is a significant and very intentional departure from the previous Fitbit look, reminding us more of a Garmin Vivosmart or a Microsoft Band than anything that Fitbit has sold before. … [Read more...]
Mattel Snaps Up Sproutling
In the latest sign of consolidation in the wearables market, Mattel, the toy giant that's home to Barbie and Hot Wheels, has bought Sproutling, the wearable baby monitor company. Sproutling makes an ankle bracelet that tracks a baby's heart rate, skin temperature, motion, and position; it works with a camera, base station and app. Price was not announced, but the Silicon … [Read more...]
NPD Says Fitbit Dominates the Fitness Tracker Market
Fitbit sells 8 out of every 10 fitness trackers, the market research company NPD says. By the end of 2015, nearly 33 million trackers had been sold in the United States, compared to 13 million smartwatches -- a figure that might come as a disappointment to the industry analysts who had been predicting global Apple Watch sales of 21 million last year. However, consumers … [Read more...]
Survey Says Runners Want Great GPS and Heart Monitors
A survey of runners at the online community Athlete IQ found that peer and expert recommendations were the most important factors in deciding which wearable tech to get -- and that functionality far outtrumped price. The site asked 732 marathoners, triathletes, and steeplechasers about what tech they used and why. About 84 percent said functionality was the most important … [Read more...]
Oral Roberts Students Are Required to Wear Fitbits
Oral Roberts University has long had a fitness requirement for first-year students but a written activity log sufficed until this academic year. Now, all 900 incoming freshmen have to wear Fitbit trackers (which they have to buy) and share the data with the school. The Tulsa World newspaper (Oral Roberts is in Tulsa, OK) reports that professors had previously been required … [Read more...]
Apple Forecasts Sales Drop; Doesn’t Break out Watch Sales (Updated)
Apple reported its fourth quarter earnings today -- $18.4 billion net on sales of $75.9 billion -- but said it anticipated its first quarterly sales drop since 2003 in the first quarter of 2016. Overall sales and iPhone shipments fell short of predictions. For the record: the company didn't break out sales of the Apple Watch. [Update: $4.35 billion in "Other" sales … [Read more...]
Consumer Reports Validates Fitbit’s Heart Rate Tracker
The day Fitbit announced the Blaze tracker at CES, a class-action lawsuit harshed the company's buzz. (That, and an 18 percent drop in its stock price.) The claim was the heart rate monitor on the Fitbit Charge HR and Surge were inaccurate enough to cause harm. Fitbit pointed to its disclaimers, saying the monitor wasn't meant to be a medical device after all. Maybe Fitbit … [Read more...]
Juniper Says Fitness Trackers Will Outpace Smart Watches Until 2018
The well-respected Juniper Research is out with its latest wearables report -- this one estimating that fitness trackers will continue to be the largest category in wearables until people figure out a use case for smart watches. That will take, Juniper estimates, a couple of years. But it's in the fine print where Juniper's findings get interesting. In a white paper … [Read more...]
Doctors Develop Dissolving Brain Pressure Sensors
The Atlantic has a really interesting article about doctors in the Midwest working on pressure sensors that can be implanted in patients' brains, and which are absorbed by the body after they're no longer useful. From the article: It consists of a membrane made from PLGA, a polymer regularly used in medical devices, suspended in a frame of silicon and magnesium. The pressure … [Read more...]