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Fitbit reveals plans to develop a specialized app store.
The current market of fitness trackers is being dominated by Fitbit, and their standing is very likely to increase as it has recently purchased software assets from Pebble. As such, the company has the resources it needs to create an app store specially dedicated for their devices.
Despite Pebble’s hardware being mostly crowdfunded over its five years of existence, the company managed to develop an app store featuring over 14,000 third-party apps. Acquiring the company’s know-how in building a proper app store was essential for Fitbit as it wants to expand its supremacy over the fitness trackers by offering their customers, even more, options and features.
The news regarding Fitbit’s plans in building an app store was revealed by James Park, the company’s CEO, during an interview at the Consumer Electronic Show 2017. He stated that the development of an app store would be extremely beneficial for Fitbit, especially since it tries to extend its services and overall relationship with health care companies as well as any other employers, which are using the fitness tracker for wellness programs.
The company recently announced that it has established a new partnership with both Qualcomm and UnitedHealthCare, in order to offer up to $1,500 in annual incentives to employees who the Fitbit Charge 2 device. During his interview, Park also stated that there is a lot of interest in developing apps for the fitness tracker, but at the moment they don’t have the means to support them or even the software infrastructure to install the apps.
With this announcement, the company seems more keen than ever to release their own smartwatch, especially since last year’s Fitbit Blaze was so similar in functionality and design with one, but did not support third-party apps. No other details regarding the launch of the app store were revealed.
Besides this news, Fitbit also launched a new update which includes a new social feature titled Feed, which allows you to easily keep in touch with friends and family. Another new feature is Personalized Guidance, which provides a more efficient and smarter training, while the Fitstar Personal Trainer offers users more customization options and it attempts to properly motivate you to work out. Finally, the FItstart Radio allows you to customize your workout soundtrack.
Image source: Flickr
