With all of the new fitness technology in the market at the moment, it’s no major surprise that Adidas are looking to get involved. Eric Liedtke, who heads up performance at Adidas, has hinted to Pocket Lint that his company are looking to get involved in the billion dollar market. Nike and Adidas aren’t often left isolated in a market without the presence of the other for long, so it will be interesting to see what Adidas come up with.
The trend at the moment is towards developing watches which don’t just measure your fitness, but also to actually help you improve it. This was the crux of the criticism that Wired magazine fired at the activity tracker / sports watch market recently, criticism which I addressed here when we looked at whether your activity tracker may be making you fatter.
Liedtke teased Pocket Lint by saying “I hope we get to show you what we are working on, and you will see where we have come from,” – a remark which was evidently intended to build up anticipation for an upcoming product.
Adidas feel that the market for fitness trackers is exhausted, with tonnes of products already in the space. Liedtke made this point explicitly, perhaps as a slight dig at the hugely popular Nike Fuelband, but he definitely has a point. Besides the Fuelband, companies like Jawbone and Fitbit are making some serious headway in this market, often with highly affordable devices which are coming in at around the £75 mark. Adidas are also focussing on simplicity, wanting something which is different to a wristband monitor but which can also deliver more value.
This raises a wider point around data and how people use it. The World is full of ever increasing volumes of data, yet it doesn’t matter how nicely you present it in your app, it is a case of how can we actually make this data usable? How can we help real people get fitter with fitness tech?
Data relevance is a fundamental point here, as time will tell how long people remain interested in tracking their steps ala 1990’s pedometers.
It will be interesting to keep tabs on this, as the sector hots up even more. We’ll keep you up to date on any new developments.