All the other news stories from the week
Happy Sunday wearable tech lovers. Put your feet up, grab your phone, iPad or laptop and let us catch you up on all that’s been going on in a busy week in the world of wearables.
All eyes were on Fitbit after it announced its second smartwatch and its first fitness tracker for kids. It was also a week that Google decided to ditch Android Wear (just the name) and rebrand to Wear OS. Don’t worry, there’s more than a just a simple name change on the cards as Google revealed its future Wear OS plans to our US editor Hugh.
Away from the headline-grabbing stories, there’s also been plenty of other speculation and rumour-mongering that didn’t quite make the news cut but we’ve still saved them for you, because we’re nice like that.
Read on to catch up on the best of the rest of the other wearable tech stories of the week.
Fitbit trash talks Apple Watch
Oh no they didn’t! Now we’re sure there’s a lot of bad talk that happens about the competition behind closed doors, so it was surprising to hear Fitbit do it in public. Speaking to investors at the Roth Investment Conference in Laguna Beach, California, Fitbit’s chief financial officer Bill Zerella decided to share some thoughts on what he really felt about the Apple Watch.
“I have yet to meet anyone who owns an Apple Watch who’s passionate about the product,” Zerella said, adding that Watch sales mainly piggybacked off iPhones sales. Ouch.
Apple doesn’t spill the beans on sales figures of its smartwatch, but there have been plenty of analysts that seem to have the data to suggest the Watch is actually doing pretty well. Fitbit on the other hand recently revealed that its debut smartwatch didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Maybe things will change when the ‘mass appeal’ Fitbit Versa lands in April.
Virgin Active on wearables in the gym
The gym chain has revealed the top tech habits of 2,000 of its UK members and found that 40% use tech to track their fitness activity. Over half (54%) use additional tech or kit to improve their workout while 23% track their heart rate. Interestingly, only 14% regularly count steps. Although, if you’re already hitting the gym, you’re perhaps more interested in squats and getting hench than seeing if you’ve hit your daily step goal.
Virgin Active also announced that is adding new classes (Heat, Run Tribe, Punch and Ro) to put those fitness monitors to the test and burn some serious calories in the process.
Bazynga! Fitbit’s big plans to gamify fitness
Fitbit announced this week that it was adding gaming and entertainment exec Matthew Bromberg to its board of directors. Bromberg is currently chief operating officer at mobile social game developer Zynga and previously worked at Electronic Arts.
“At Fitbit, we are focused on encouraging lasting behavior change that can lead to positive health outcomes, and have seen firsthand how making health and fitness fun through gamification leads to great results,” said James Park, co-founder and CEO of Fitbit.
Now we know Fitbit’s vibrant community is one of its biggest strengths, so it’ll be interesting to see how Bromberg uses his gaming experience to help motivate users to hit their health and fitness goals.
Polar’s M430 just got more attractive
The Polar M430 is one of our running watch faves (once it sorted out its HR issues) and now it’s even more desirable after Polar decided to drop the price down to . That makes it one of the best value watches out there and could be a wise investment for anyone who’s ready to start running or is training for a big race later in the year. It’s also now available in green, which is not a St Patrick’s Day tie-in but to give it a more Spring/Summer feel.
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Check out the meatier stories of the week on our dedicated news page.