Business

Fit for healthy growth in the wearables sector

Fitbit devices allow users to track every step they take, their heart rate, and their quality of sleep
Fitbit devices allow users to track every step they take, their heart rate, and their quality of sleep Fitbit devices allow users to track every step they take, their heart rate, and their quality of sleep

FITBIT'S journey has been a remarkable one. The wearable fitness tech company thought it had reached the end of the road a number of times during its first few years of trading, but now, having completed a very successful IPO in June, it is valued at just over $9 billion and is regarded as one of the most important players in the booming connected health sector.

Between April and June, Fitbit says it sold 4.5 million devices and had a turnover in excess of $400m – well above analysts’ expectations. It has sold over 20m devices since the company was founded in 2007.

A number of analysts had forecast that Apple’s Watch would seriously damage the growth of Fitbit, but so far quite the opposite has happened. There are a number of reasons for this: primarily because Fitbit can offer a range of products at a much lower price point, but also because its devices deliver a very user-friendly experience, with simplicity at the heart of all that they do. Fitbit is also ‘eating the lunch’ of other industry stalwarts such as Garmin, which has been slow to develop web-enabled fitness tracking devices.

Fitbit’s solution allows users to track every step they take, their heart rate, and their quality of sleep. For the more enthusiastic user, it can also track sports activity and GPS-recorded runs, with the recently launched Fitbit Surge device. All of this information is recorded in the Fitbit system so that comprehensive reports can be accessed to compare activities over weeks and months.

The user has the option of recording their food diary as well as having Fitbit Internet connected scales, so that a huge amount of connected health data can be recorded and potentially in the future accessed by health professionals. Wearable devices and the connected health sector are growing significantly as people decide that they want to become much more intimate with their vital health statistics and consider changing behaviours as a result.

There are of course a lot of sceptics surrounding this subject who see it as a way for large companies to sell “big data” in the future, possibly other industries, including insurance and medical companies.

Fitbit also has significant challenges ahead because many of its competitors and potential competitors have significant advantages and it knows that to survive, let alone grow, it needs to become a platform rather than just a product. That means moving into niche markets by making devices for very specific kinds of activities - as it has done with the Surge, which is aimed at serious runners - and moving into healthcare and corporate healthcare.

At Novosco, we decided to offer every member of our team a Fitbit device so that they can become more actively involved in recording their daily physical activities. It has been a huge success to date as everyone now competes in a league to see who can complete the most steps on a rolling seven-day basis. With a mobile app running on your smartphone, you can analyse your Fitbit dashboard and taunt and cheer your colleagues.

On the whole, this is without doubt only really the start of a multi-billion dollar industry which companies in Northern Ireland can become part of, either by developing complimentary solutions to what currently exists, or maybe creating the next new platform for connected health. We are fortunate that locally we are actively engaged in a connected health ethos, but much more could be done at the grass roots level to fund new and exciting research and development projects.

Governments across the globe must look at this more seriously as we try to tackle our huge health burden and encourage everyone to become more active and to work towards much healthier diets. Proactive solutions are required rather than just simply reacting to the problem when it is too late.

:: Patrick McAliskey is managing director of Novosco, an indigenous Northern Ireland IT infrastructure company with offices in Belfast, Dublin and Birmingham. It employs 100 people and works for leading organisations across the UK and Ireland, including many of the north’s top companies, UK health trusts, councils and other organisations.