Under Armour pares down digital portfolio
Under Armour has announced that it is selling the MyFitnessPal platform to Francisco Partners, while also discontinuing Endomondo. After purchasing MyFitnessPal in 2015 for $475 million, the planned sale is valued at $345 million. In fairness to Under Armour, the company had a confusing array of apps and has seemingly struggled to pull them altogether into a cohesive digital strategy after it went on a binge buying spree in the 2015 period. It’s key to note that the MapMyFitness platform (including MapMyRide and MayMyRun) remain part of the UA digital strategy, particularly as they are tied into the connected footwear business.
The NPD Take:
- There’s good and bad here. The good news is that UA can focus on building a comprehensive exercise/activity focused app solution that is still rather complex today by removing these additional assets
- However… the MyFitnessPal app is a key way of tracking the calorie intake for its users, which is key to a well-rounded exercise-focused regime. Further, it is the most popular third-party fitness app that we track in the Wearables Ownership Report, with 52 percent of smartwatch owners who use a third party app choosing it. That’s only slightly lower than all of UA’s other apps combined.
The mask-phone arrives?
Of course some enterprising company was going to combine a mask with earbuds to claim the “first face mask with headphones built in”. Unfortunately, the Maskfone ($50) is hardly what anyone wanted or expected. Rather, it’s a mask with some little pockets to store your earbuds in, and a pair of necklace-style earbuds to complete the story. How very disappointing.
The NPD Take:
- Okay, so this mask/earbud implementation is a disappointment and far from what we were expecting. But there is an opportunity here. Frankly, we’re surprised that Motorola hasn’t jumped into this space as it used to lead the headphone/clothing integrations, such as its snowboarding jacket. Sadly, there is still plenty of time for someone to have another go at a real solution