Sussing out Weight Watchers’ iPhone app competition

By: Brian Dolan | Aug 8, 2009

Weight Watchers iPhone David Kirchhoff, Weight Watchers’ president and CEO announced yesterday that Weight Watchers will soon submit an iPhone application to Apple in an effort to provide “convenience and information on demand to further [members'] weight-loss success and to further modernize the Weight Watchers’ brand.”

Weight Watchers is one of the most recognizable brands in the consumer health industry, but do they need an iPhone app? As you might expect, nearly all of the most downloaded applications in the Health & Fitness category in the AppStore are nutrition, exercise and/or weight loss-related. The WW app would have to compete with the many free or cheap apps already popular among iPhone users. The Weight Watchers app will be a free offering, but only for current Weight Watchers members, which begs the question: How many Weight Watchers members have iPhones?

Since Weight Watchers’ aim seems to be to provide a mobile offering for its existing members, as opposed to using an iPhone app as a means to attract new members (a free or cheap app available to any iPhone user would be the strategy there), the company would do well to consider a more horizontal approach to its mobile offering so all of its mobile phone-equipped members can take advantage of it. Why not offer a text message based service whereby members can text in the number of points they are consuming to their online database? Members could also text in their weight each time they step on the scale. Weight Watchers could, in turn, provide encouragement or reminders via text message to all its members.

If Weight Watchers is going to offer an app for its members, anyway, let’s determine how that app could have the biggest impact, while sussing out what has made other weight watching apps popular to date.

The next big opportunity for iPhone app developers looking to tap the health and fitness market is the race to create applications that interact with medical peripheral devices via Bluetooth. Apple recently demonstrated a prototype of a Bluetooth-enabled glucometer developed by LifeScan that could send information to a corresponding app. Apple has announced plans to open up its Bluetooth API for medical devices, so applications that leverage this functionality will probably hit the market sometime next year.

Why doesn’t Weight Watchers lead the charge with an application that automatically populates with a user’s weight every time they step on their Bluet00th-enabled scale? The bigger brands need to step up their app development efforts if they want to compete with the health app incumbents, and Bluetooth-enabled devices might be just the ticket.

Continue reading below for a slideshow of the currently most downloaded iPhone applications that Weight Watchers’ iPhone-equipped members are probably already using. Let us know how new entrants can distinguish their health and fitness apps or whether it’s all been done before.

Top Paid Health & Fitness App: iFitness

iFitness iPhone App True, Weight Watchers is typically known for its tracking of eating habits along with fluctuations in weight, however, the company’s online offerings include tips for getting in shape as well as some instructions on how to correctly do certain recommended exercises. iFitness, the current top paid app in the Health & Fitness category is completely focused on helping users correctly perform certain exercises. iFitness costs the users a one-time fee of $1.99.

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Sophie

Finally! I want that app! Hopefully it will make may day more easy!
Sume jooste

Well i am one of the weight watchers members that have a iphone. At the moment im using Log it which is a free app and is helping me greatly but i must still add my food items to the program. What really is weight watchers delay? As a member i would be delighted to use the app. And im sure it would attract a lot of new members as well. It can even be very good bussiness for the iphone. Since i’ve load log it my sister is searching the net for a app for her nokia but is coming up empty handed. She is extreamly jelous about my app. So please make a app available to all members free. Any body that has been contemplating to join weight watchers can then get a brief glimp of how easy the diet really is. Thanks
vron

Boy, it really seems like you don’t understand the issue at all. People would not track their daily weight with an iphone app; what they are looking for is a points calculator. There have been earlier ones that work with, for example, the Palm OS — they provide a database of common foods that one can simply look up, or one could put in the fat and fiber content of a serving and the calculator would calc the points value. Some of the better Palm ones even did the daily tracking so that a user could see how many points they had left in a given day or flex points in a week.

All of this requires access to a local database (which is usually OS-specific) as well as a calculator. Many apps have been written for this functionality for various OSs, but they get quashed by WW as violation of copyright.

Because such complex functionality is OS-specific, it’s important to look at what the market wants — there’s a LOT of Iphone users out there who would appreciate such an app. Problem with WW’s version is that one needs to subscribe to their service to get it.
http://www.usher.net.au Paul

I got sick of waiting for a points calculator in Australia, so I wrote my own for the iPhone. I am also looking at building in a logging feature which talks to eTools. Since there are so many WW members that have iPhones, I can’t understand why WW(Aus) don’t do something official.

anyone who wants to help test please contact me on paul at usher dot net dot au
http://www.petfood123.com Michael Levine

I am interested in testing this out with you. I have diabetes, and could also use information on carb counting.

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