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
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.
Top Paid Health & Fitness App: Tap & Track Calorie, Weight and Exercise Tracker
Currently this app is the second most downloaded paid application in the Health & Fitness category. This app allows users to track calories in and calories out by tracking food, exercise, BMI, and weight. The app includes calorie counts for 80,000 food items and 404 restaurants plus 180 exercises. All this for a one time fee of $2.99.
Top Free Health & Fitness App: Lose It!
Lose It! is the top free app in the Health & Fitness category and has consistently ranked as one of the most downloaded apps for a long time. Lose It! aims to help users "succeed at weight loss" by helping them set goals, track calories and exercise routines in order to stay on the calorie budget. It's free.
Top Free Health & Fitness App: Restaurant Nutrition
Restaurant Nutrition currently ranks in the top five most downloaded, free Health & Fitness applications. The app provides calorie information for the food served at an ever growing list of restaurants and offers to populate that information in a personal health network website for those users interestedUsers can turn on diets to track calorie carbohydrates, protein, and fat to help track and quantify their dieting progress. Users can launch the iPhone's Maps app right from the Restaurant Nutrition application in order to find the nearest location of a given restaurant.
Top Free Health & Fitness App: Food & Fitness Tracker
SparkPeople.com created this application earlier this year for the iPhone users within its 5 million online users. This app lets users track food and calories from SparkPeople's 500,000 item food database. Users can get their meal plans customized for their goals and they can quickly track their fitness, food and water. Since SparkPeople already has an online presence, it offers synchronization between tracking on the app and tracking users do on the website.
