Withings has announced its acquired 8Fit, a health, fitness and wellness focused app to help boost the way owners of its smartwatches and other connected health tech can keep up good healthy habits.
While Withings hasn't revealed how much it's paid up for the app, it's revealed it's planning to use the acquisition to build more personalised health and wellness plans for its devices.
Essential reading: Withings ScanWatch in-depth review
8Fit's subscription-based app launched in 2014 and is centred around offering custom home workouts along with personalised meal plans and wellness features like sleep meditations. It currently offers apps for both Android and iOS and there's an Apple TV app available too.
Withings' current app, Health Mate, is a pretty polished software companion to its hardware and does already offer programs within that app for managing weight and improving sleep. Bringing in 8Fit's expertise would certainly bolster what Withings could offer in terms of more fitness-focused programs and perhaps more interestingly, around nutrition, where many apps fall short on.
Rival apps from the likes of Fitbit do offer some of the features 8Fit offers, like home workouts and personalised insights, but this looks like a shrewd move by Withings to make sure it's covering all bases in terms of promoting good healthy behaviors.
"With the acquisition of 8fit, we are well placed to deliver a strategy that combines elegantly designed health devices, enhanced health data and experienced advice that is simple to adopt and designed specifically for our customers.” said Mathieu Letombe, CEO of Withings.
The acquisition of 8fit follows the news that Withings picked up French medical device company Impeto Medical to fuel a bigger push into connected health devices.
In January, Withings added new devices to its range in the shape of its Body Scan smart scale. In late 2021, it finally received FDA clearance to sell its ScanWatch hybrid, which packs ECG and SpO2 sensors to deliver serious health monitoring insights.
Outside of new finishes and looks, we technically haven't seen a new hybrid smartwatch from Withings since 2020. So it feels like a good time to see something new on the wearable front.
We were fans of the ScanWatch and the Steel Sport HR, so we'll be intrigued to see what this latest acquisition means for future Withings hybrids.
How we test
By Michael Sawh
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.