Fitbit’s Final Hours

My colleague Tom has recently become addicted to his Fitbit. Unfortunately for him, his addiction to this particular device may be short lived. Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference is this Monday, and it has been widely rumored the company is preparing to enter the personal fitness tracking market. Over the last couple of years, Apple has hired a number of notable fitness and sleep experts, has met with the FDA, and screen shots have recently surfaced of what is purportedly Apple’s new Healthbook app. In addition, the company has hired Angela Ahrendts (former CEO of Burberry) to run their retail operation and acquired the fashion headphone maker Beats. The iPhone 5s is actually already capable of tracking steps itself – even when it has seemingly completely lost its charge. It doesn’t take a master tea leaf reader to guess that Apple is at least pondering a big move into a wearable fitness tracking market.

Now all of this may seem like good news. Because of its size, installed user base and design expertise, Apple could instantly have tens of millions of people interested and actively participating in personal health monitoring. They can also provide the health industry and health device makers a singular, consolidated direction and a set of APIs and standards upon which they can build. These developments would undoubtedly be good for society as a whole. The only  problem is a bit of “disruption” for (or potential elimination of) current device makers in an industry that heretofore had done a fair bit of good for people (e.g. MP3 player makers before the iPod and smart phones makers before the iPhone).

While Fitbit and similar services are unquestionably good products and have been pioneers in the realm of personal fitness tracking, I wonder how long they will last once Apple has brought to bear the full force of its industrial design, software development and marketing teams to this space. Some companies may have already been spooked by the previously mentioned tea leaves. In April, Nike – whose Fuelband was one of the most successful wearable fitness devices in the market – decided to exit the fitness hardware business entirely.

Hopefully good, smart companies like Fitbit can adapt and change when presented with the challenge of a behemoth entering a market they created and previously had to themselves. Maybe their services can be integrated into Apple’s plans or they can develop a profitable niche that Apple’s offerings don’t adequately cover. But even if these companies end up like Rio and Blackberry, at least millions of people (Tom included) will be more conscious of their health than they were before Fitbit existed.