Over the past year connected fitness devices -- activity trackers and sensor-laden wearables -- have consistently made headlines. By far the largest company working in wearable fitness devices, Nike, which offers the wrist-worn FuelBand, recently announced the first class of startups accepted into its Nike+ accelerator. The company aims to build an ecosystem of apps around its Nike Fuel platform...
This week the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), which is responsible for developing technical standards for the short-range wireless technology and evangelizing its adoption, announced the finalized standards for Bluetooth Smart sensors that measure speed and cadence for running and cycling. The standards are for devices that use the Bluetooth 4.0 low energy standard branded as Bluetooth...
Endomondo, developers of a GPS-enabled sports tracker app, has had more than 10 million downloads for its fitness application. As of last September the company had about 5 million downloads for its app, which is available on a multitude of mobile platforms, including iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile and Java phones. All in all the app works on more than 250...
In recent weeks Pebble, developers of a "smartwatch" that connects to iPhone and Android devices via Bluetooth, has become the most successful project or startup to leverage the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise money: So far, it's raised more than $8 million. The Kickstarter platform has only raised a few hundred million overall, which made Pebble's success headline news. This week the...
Given the recent influx of connected fitness devices that often offer their own companion smartphone apps, it may come as no surprise that at least one existing fitness app developer has decided to launch its own branded suite of devices to feed data into its app: Austria-based Runtastic. This week the company announced the availability of a GPS-enabled pulse watch and a heart rate chest strap....
RunKeeper announced a $10 million round of investments led by Spark Capital, which has also invested in Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, with participation from another new investor, AOL co-founder Steve Case's Revolution Ventures. Return backer OATV, the venture arm of O'Reilly Media, also participated in the new round. The Boston-based startup, which now has 14 employees, plans to use the funding...
Endomondo, developer of the Sports Tracker fitness app, announced this week $2.3 million in funding from SEED Capital. It is the second round of funding for Endomondo from SEED, which also contributed $800,000 this past March.
The app, which provides GPS tracking of distance-based sports, including biking, running and walking, now has 5 million downloads, according to the company.
Part of the app...
Strava Cycling iPhone app
Fitness startups may be becoming a hot commodity for venture capitalists, according to a report in peHUB. In a recent article, the publication profiled venture capitalist Greg Gretsch who brought his hardcore cycling habit into his investment portfolio.
Gretsch who is the managing director of Sigma Partners spent many years avoiding investing in his hobbies, but when he...
"Where will all this data go?"
It's a common question for those in the mobile health space -- right up there with "Who Pays?" and "How will the FDA view my app?" For a few years many hoped personal health records (PHRs) like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault would act as the central repositories for health data streaming in from various personal health devices, sensors and apps. Not so much...
