Come on Apple, if you think you’re fit enough

The battle for supremacy gets even more serious tomorrow when Apple is expected to launch its much-vaunted smartwatch, likely to contain several health-related functions.

“The arrival of the Apple watch is going to have a huge impact on the wearables and fitness market,” said Steve Ranger, editor of the IT news service TechRepublic. “It will immediately become the smartwatch against which all others will be judged.”

Based in north London, and with a market value of just £14m, Fitbug is a relative minnow but has pulled off deals with big retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy and Target in America, and J Sainsbury on this side of the pond.

The spate of tie-ups prompted the share price to soar after languishing for years: once a penny stock, it rocketed above 20p at one point but has since fallen back to 5¾p.

Landau said: “For a long time, Fitbug was under the radar. There was very little understanding out there that there was this British company, listed on AIM, making headway in a very hot space. The Target and Sainsbury deals lit the blue touchpaper.”

Perhaps a sign of its confidence in a market dominated by the giants of the tech scene is a trademark dispute with rival device maker Fitbit. The British company lost the initial case but wants to appeal.

With the wearable tech market growing strongly, there may be bigger battles to come away from the courtroom.

A slew of new entrants is trying to make its mark. Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment maker, announced it would launch a smartwatch expected to include several health-related features. TAG Heuer, the upmarket Swiss watchmaker, plans to unveil a smartwatch this yearand, in a break with tradition, much of it will be manufactured in Silicon Valley rather than Switzerland.

The traditional players are also continuing to innovate. Conor Pierce, vice-president of IT and mobile at Samsung’s UK arm, declined to reveal what new products it had in the works but said: “We expect to see even more devices this year with a range of new capabilities, both specifically in fitness as well as other areas.”

Sales of fitness-related devices are forecast to reach $15.8bn by 2020, up from $9.1bn (£6bn) this year, according to Gartner, a market research agency.

The interest in fitness technology is not confined to hardware makers such as Apple, Samsung and the rest.

Last month Under Armour, the sports clothing brand, splashed out $475m to buy the MyFitnessPal health tracker platform and $85m on Endomondo, a fitness-related social network. It previously bought MapMyFitness for $150m.

Analysts and industry experts suggest the market for fitness devices is evolving, from being gizmos favoured by tech nerds to devices used by the mainstream. In America, a healthy 5.7% of adults own a fitness wristband, according to Gartner.

The challenge facing manufacturers is how to prevent users from developing the ennui that sets in when the novelty of counting how many steps you walk or monitoring your heartbeat wears off. A survey published last year by the American consultancy Endeavour Partners found that more than half the consumers who have owned an “activity tracker” no longer use it. Endeavour dubs this the “dirty secret of wearables”.

Gareth Jones, Fitbit’s vice-president Europe, acknowledges the problem and says the company is trying to address it: for example, by changing the device’s fitness regimes to make them “extremely easy” to engage with.

In many cases, it has fallen to independent software developers to offer solutions by providing services that make use of the data that a device records.

One of the more successful fitness apps is Strava. It allows cyclists and runners to monitor their performance times and compare them with those of other users.

Founded in 2009, the business, backed by leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia, will not disclose precisely how many members it has, saying only that it is “millions” but claiming to be adding more than 100,000 people a week globally. “Our attrition rate is very small,” said Gareth Nettleton, international marketing director.

He said that about a third of its members use the app every day. A huge chunk of them are in London. “We have more runners and cyclists in London than in any city around the world,” said Nettleton, who added that growth was largely due to friends introducing the service to each other. “It’s the social network effect.”

This so-called gamification of fitness, where people compete rather than monitor raw data, is crucial to the growth of the tech fitness industry.

“The huge challenge is to move beyond the already fit 5% that wristbands and [smart] watches tend to appeal to,” said Helen Nuki, chief executive of StepJockey, an app that encourages workers to climb the stairs at work rather than use the lift. It has been adopted by blue-chip employers such as KPMG, Barclays and Visa.

Device makers are also cottoning on to this psychology. Take Bath-based Swimtag: rather than market its products to consumers the company sells its device, which transmits performance data to a computer, to pool operators.

Customers borrow the waterproof wristband when they turn up for a swim and can use it to track their progress and compare themselves with other swimmers.

“We get the kind of users who would never normally go out and buy a [tech] product,” said Kieran Sloyan, Swimtag’s managing director.

Another way to make sure gym bunnies don’t lose interest is to make it worth their while. This is the philosophy behind Bounts, a loyalty scheme app for fitness fanatics operating in 11 countries.

Founder and chief executive John Stuart said many people would simply stick their fitness devices in a drawer if there was no reason to keep going.

Members of Bounts, which works with many of the main technology makers, collect points for working out. These can be redeemed for discounts at shops and restaurants.

Like Strava, word of mouth is helping to spread awareness. “Every new member that signs up is referring us to another three people,” said Stuart.

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