Apple Watch will include fitness and health tracking features
Update: Fitbit statement below the fold…
If you’re in the market for a Fitbit device and you’re shopping at the Apple Store, you’ll probably have to shop elsewhere to purchase the fitness tracker. Following report from Re/Code last month that Apple planned to drop the Fitbit line of wearable devices from its Apple Store lineup, Apple has today removed the Fitbit Flex and other Fitbit products from its online store following low inventory over the past week. While its unclear why Apple is no longer selling Fitbit products through its retail channels, on the surface the move is similar to Apple’s decision to discontinue selling Bose headphones and speakers at its retail and online stores.
While the Bose move is highly suspected to be related to Apple’s purchase of Beats Electronics earlier this year, Apple could have dropped Fitbit for any number of reasons including lack of support for iOS 8’s HealthKit feature and direct competition from Apple’s upcoming Watch which includes fitness and health tracking features.
Fitbit has publicly shared that it has no plans to integrate with Apple’s HealthKit tool which allows apps to share information with Apple’s new Health app on iOS 8. “At the moment, we’re working on other exciting projects that we think will be valuable to users,” the company said following HealthKit’s launch.
The company has since announced something which will compete closer with the Apple Watch, a $250 fitness tracking smartwatch called the Fitbit Surge. The Fitbit Surge includes GPS tracking independent of a smartphone while the Apple Watch will rely on the iPhone for GPS capabilities.
Apple previously sold the Fitbit Flex, a $99 wearable band featuring an activity tracker with sleep tracking features.
Apple does still offer other fitness trackers including the Jawbone UP and Jawbone UP24 band, both of which support Apple’s Health app and are featured in a HealthKit section of its online store, as well as the Nike FuelBand although online availability is currently limited to one size of the band. Withings also offers several HealthKit-compatible products with apps and devices featured by Apple.
[tweet https://twitter.com/Withings/status/520287859748909056]
The Jawbone UP24, a $129 fitness band with activity and sleep tracking, is most similar to the dropped Fitbit Flex aside from the $30 difference and support for Apple’s HealthKit and iOS 8 Health app.
Apple highlighted a number of fitness and health tracking features available in its upcoming Apple Watch product due out next year. Earlier this month, 9to5Mac exclusively reported that Apple Retail SVP Angela Ahrendts shared in a video message to Apple employees that the watch launch will occur during the spring season of next year, a time frame some may interpret as later than the official “early 2015” timeframe shared by the company thus far.
Apple has so far only shared the starting price for the Apple Watch–$350–although one rumor has claimed the Apple Watch could include price points at $500 and $5,000 as well.
We’ve reached out to Fitbit for comment on the change and will update if we hear back. In the meantime, you can find Fitbit’s current lineup of fitness tracking wearables online from Amazon starting at $49. Some physical Apple Retail Store locations also still have existing inventory for now.
Update: Fitbit CEO and co-founder James Part shared the following statement in response to the news:
“As the #1 selling connected device with 69% year-to-date 2014 market share (source: NPD), Fitbit is currently sold in 46 countries and in over 37,000 retail stores, including Amazon, AT&T, Best Buy, Bloomingdales, Brookstone, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kohls, Microsoft Store, Nordstrom, REI, Target, The Sports Authority, Tory Burch, Verizon and Walmart. Fitbit looks forward to a robust holiday season as the connected health and fitness category continues its rapid growth.”
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Something’s happened between Fitbit and Apple here. If you watch the WWDC unveiling of HealthKit, Fitbit is literally the first thing shown in the presentation, I’m sure that wasn’t a coincidence, at some point Fitbit was on-board with Apple on HealthKit. If it’s Fitbit getting mad about Apple Watch that seems short sighted on their part and fighting with Apple tends to end up with one loser.
Apple killed everyone’s initial HealthKit-compatible apps as they were preparing to launch, which irked many developers who’d redone their apps just to mesh with HealthKit. After that fiasco, Fitbit (probably smartly) took a “let’s wait and see approach” to HealthKit considering the uncertainty. Apple didn’t take that too well, and things went downhill from there.
ReadWrite has a good summary of this (http://readwrite.com/2014/10/16/apple-store-fitbit-healthkit). Apple looks like a bully, Fitbit looks shortsighted.
Apple didn’t “kill” anyone’s app, they suspended the launch of HealthKit due to bugs being discovered just before launch. They merely suspended it until the bug got rectified, and then launched it after patching. Please don’t add extra hyperbole to your statements when it’s not required.
If Apple wanting to get HeathKit right is what irked FitBit, then I say to them, tough. Getting something like a health component to work properly is critical, after all, this is for your health. If FitBit got their panties in a twist over this and decided to pull out of the program as a result, then too bad for them. The ship has sailed without them.
Most of the health apps that I use managed to implement HealthKit syncing without issue, even with the delays, even with Apple’s botched roll-out.
Also I have issue with the quote from the article: “Apple executive Craig Federighi cited Fitbit as an example of the devices he hoped would use it”
Do you really believe that Apple featured Fitbit so prominently in the introductory presentation on HealthKit, without actually talking and agreeing it with Fitbit in the first place. Of course not. This leads me to believe that they were on board and now they are not, for whatever reason.
Well FitBit I would imagine is losing a lot of business because of this decision.
I myself bought into Withings devices in the last couple of weeks – Scale, BP monitor & O2. They work great with their app and via Health. The data is even synced to MyFitnessPal service so I’m a happy camper.
It’s because fitbit sells your PRIVATE personal health data to other companies. You cannot do this and be part of healthkit. Apple does NOT allow data selling. EVERYONE should drop fitbit. They sell your medical information.
http://www.fitbit.com/privacy they dont sell your info. quit with the lies