Published in IoT

Under Armour buys fitness apps for $0.56 billion

by on05 February 2015


Snapped MyFitnessPal for $475m and Endomondo $85m 

The Internet of Things, or IoT in geek parlance, is a big deal. Intel hopes to buy and craft its way into this niche, as it missed the smartphone trend. 

Intel said repeatedly that it doesn’t want to miss the next wave. So far, the Internet of Things can be described as the Internet of NoThings, but many outfits are trying to carve out a market for themselves.

Under Armour, the company famous for its fitness clothing, is massively buying its way into fitness tracking applications. This Baltimore-based sport outfitter paid $85 million for the Endomondo app for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. This app keeps track of data related to running, walking, cycling and other distance sports. This oddly named app works well with wearables from Fitbit, Garmin, Jabra and probably some others we don’t know about. The acquisition was announced during the company's Q4 earnings conference call.

This was s small bite for Under Armour, as the company now announced that is snapped much bigger and wealthier player MyFitnessPal for $475 million. MyFitnessPal tells you how and what to eat in other to become or stay slim. It is the application that can keep track on your calories and help you lose weight. It just told me that if I eat exacly as it tells me I will lose 5KG / 10 pounds by March 12th. 

myfitness

The value is in the user base, as there are a total of 80 million registered users, while the smaller Endomondo has some 20 million.

The company is really serious about being one of the leaders in IoT and Software of Things market, as it already announced that it plans to make some connected fitness device with HTC. We still lack details about this collaboration, but Under Armour’s team of designers, sports scientists and athletes are working closely with HTC’s Connected Products business unit, as well as its design and engineering teams, to ensure the shared efforts will meet the highest expectations of athletes everywhere. We will see what comes out from this, maybe as early as the March 1st HTC press conference.

We have to admit that we still remain puzzled, as Nike dropped out of this wearable IoT market and with Apple about the release the Apple Watch, having apps to work with it kind of makes sense. We will see how this acquisition plays out for this fancy track shoe and T-shirt outfit, no pun intended.

Last modified on 05 February 2015
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