Will Apple’s newly launched Apple Fitness+ service become the killer of Keep?

At the Apple conference in September this year, Cook announced the launch of the Apple Fitness+ program (hereinafter referred to as Fitness+), and on December 14th, today, this health value-added service was officially launched.

The first countries to enjoy this service are the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.

We have not yet been able to use the Fitness+ service in China, which may be a pity, but curious babies may wish to learn about it first.

What is Apple Fitness+?

Fitness+ expands on the original "Fitness" (the domestic name is fitness) application, and projects the exercise records of the watch to the (relative) large screens such as iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and users can focus on following the exercise tutorial on the screen , No need to raise your wrist frequently to see heart rate, duration and other data.

Now when you open the Fitness App, you can only see two Tabs: Summary and Sharing. After joining the plan, there will be an extra Fitness+ Tab in the interface. Users who already have the "fitness" app do not need to install it again, but if they want to use it on the iPad and Apple TV, they still have to download the "fitness" separately.

In the Fitness+ Tab, you can see a lot of physical training tutorials. There are currently ten types of courses, including HIIT, Pilates, yoga, core training, boating, cycling, etc., and most courses can be followed without the aid of equipment.

Each section is guided by a real person coach, and most users are familiar with this type of content. After all, many sports apps in China have similar courses.

In each course, there are three coaches at the same time giving action guidance. If you look closely, you will find that each coach's movements are different in amplitude and frequency, with fast and slow, so that people with different foundations can keep up.

In addition, in order to take care of beginner users who are new to this kind of fitness course, Fitness+ also specially launched short and medium courses with a duration of 10-20 minutes.

It can be seen that the core of Fitness+ lies in follow-up training , or more precisely, follow- up training with a real coach .

Especially in the current epidemic situation, fitness enthusiasts can only be trapped at home. It may be a good stopgap to do exercises at home following classes.

Therefore, Apple has recruited a group of professionals to help you gain muscle/fat loss, including yoga masters, personal trainers, martial artists, gymnasts, iron champions, marathon runners, fitness club founders, etc., in order to create a professional It feels like their names will appear in a prominent position in the course.

When you can call out their names, you may realize that you have been practicing Fitness+ for a long time, and the coaches seem to have become your partners.

Apple also integrated Apple Music into Fitness+, which solved the problem of spending half an hour searching for sports playlists before exercising.

At present, we can see that Apple wants to put the method of building Apple TV+ on Fitness+, and bind users through content, so that people can exercise more and use Apple Watch more.

So, Fitness+ will appear on your iPhone, iPad, and TV in the future, but the core is still the Apple watch that you wear on your wrist.

As an old user of Apple Watch, I have experienced a series of changes from a "small smart phone" to a "sports management machine", and my core requirement for choosing it is to record exercises. Whether it's running, rowing or ironing.

I would like to believe that the data displayed on this square screen is close to reality. There is a term called "experience talk". The accuracy of the wearable device's exercise monitoring results also depends on experience.

Experience is for humans. For machines, a large amount of data is used. Through training, you can finally calculate the most accurate data "by experience".

According to the latest IDC report, Apple Watch shipped 11.8 million units in the third quarter of this year , and the overall inventory in the market is even more impressive. The exercise data obtained from AI training at this magnitude is convincing.

So when we burn calories with the coach on the screen, we can believe that the calories and heart rate data in the upper left corner are accurate, so we can adjust our exercise frequency and intensity to achieve a multiplier effect.

It’s hard to say how many users will pay for this wave of apples, but the capital market has already reacted to it. On the day Apple announced the launch date of Fitness+, the stock price of well-known sports manufacturer Peloton fell by 2% .

However, Peloton CEO John Foley politely sent his blessings from his peers to Fitness+, expressing his expectation that Apple will promote the home fitness market.

Fortunately, the price of Fitness+ is fairly affordable, 9.99 US dollars per month, or 79.99 US dollars per year, you can use the new Apple Watch for three months for free.

Fitness+ and Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud (2TB), Apple News+, a total of 6 Apple value-added services, are packaged into the Apple One family bucket package, and you can enjoy it by paying Apple $29.95 a month. Quite competitive price.

Keep, be careful

The earliest exercise follow-up course may be the aerobics program that was popular in the United States in the 1980s and was broadcast on TV.

People working out in front of the TV and sweating like rain do not seem to be much different from people who are practicing with the screen of their mobile phones today. The only difference is that there are more types of exercises and they can choose exercise items independently.

There are already many similar sports apps abroad, such as Nike Training Club, Peloton, etc., as well as fitness videos produced by major bloggers on YouTube.

There are also many domestic related competing products, such as Keep, Gudong, Xiaomi Sports, Super Gorilla, Leke, etc. It can be said that whether it is domestic or foreign, there are many head companies in the sports field for many years. Apple now Everyone has to call them "Big Brother" in the content of the incoming sports.

On the surface, this kind of sports apps compares the breadth and depth of the content. In fact, the content is only the foundation. What really allows users to stick to it is the community culture behind it.

Exercise is anti-human nature, and it is even more difficult to exercise alone. If you can have a group of like-minded fans to accompany you and encourage you, this will be much easier.

Keep’s homepage is a community. Users record fitness results on it, but they also share their hearts. Watching fitness videos at station B, the comment area is mostly healthy discussions and encourage each other.

The popular foreign Peloton sports culture is essentially the same collection. It is rare to hear anyone talk about how good Peloton's products are. However, users often say that they have met many friends in the Peloton community and felt the warmth of family.

According to the route of Peloton and Keep, Apple may be able to use Fitness+ to form a stronger bond between Apple Watch users.

In fact, in Apple's "fitness" app, friends PK have already been played. It is hidden in the "shared" Tab, and users can challenge their friends to contests, and within a week, the party with the highest score wins.

The way to get points is simple: 1 point for each hundredth of the circle closed. Theoretically, as long as the calorie goal is set low enough, the faster the ring can be closed, and the higher the score. This is what is called open-hanging, but this way you may have no friends.

With the PK gameplay, you must have the motivation to attract users to play. At present, only relying on their own love of sports, the stickiness is naturally not enough. After the launch of Fitness+, combined with the competition gameplay, it may be better for the community of sports apps like Keep. The group culture caused an impact.

But Apple’s focus is not on vying for business with sports apps. The logic behind the launch of Fitness+ is, in the final analysis, to make Apple Watch more attractive and to build the barriers higher and higher.

Apple continues to make efforts in the big health field

On one side is exercise, on the other side is health. Apple Watch carries almost all of Apple's layout in the field of health management. This watch is a key that Apple uses to open the door to the big health field, and its significance is no less than that of mobile phones and mobile Internet. , TV to smart home.

The recently exposed new patents for Apple Watch indicate that this watch can achieve continuous blood pressure monitoring in the future, "using the pulse to measure when the blood pressure pulse generated by the blood pumped from the left ventricle will reach the wrist", making it non-invasive , Airless pump to measure blood pressure.

At that time, Apple Watch will integrate real-time heart rate, ECG, blood oxygen, blood pressure and multiple health indicators monitoring functions. This is unimaginable in the first generation of Apple Watch. You can complete some routine experience projects at home without going out. The control of health has become more timely.

Starting from the simplest step-counting function, Apple Watch has been able to monitor 90+ types of exercises. The courses provided by Fitness+ can be found in "Fitness-Physical Training". .

In order to cope with the launch of Fitness+, Apple also listed third-party yoga mats and other products in the US official website Apple Store, but the price is still very "Apple".

Apple's launch of Fitness+ may be just the icing on the cake, but it is also the latest link in Apple's construction of a "healthy ecosystem". The subsequent development depends on the construction of multiple dimensions such as content update rate, interaction methods, and community building.

Let's turn our attention back to the title, will Apple Fitness+ become a Keep killer?

Looking at the several services that Apple has launched before, covering multiple fields such as music, streaming media, news, games, and online storage, when those services were first launched, there were many voices in the bad news industry.

Today, I will look at Spotify, Netflix and other companies. Not all are living well. Apple’s entry into the game even aroused the "catfish effect" in this field, which made the otherwise lifeless market become active, and the gameplay was not strong. The bigger, everyone is happy. Let's look at the sports field that Apple has chosen this time. It is far from a zero-sum game, so why not have one more apple.

And don't forget that Fitness+ must be used with Apple Watch, which undoubtedly raises the barriers for ordinary users to choose Fitness+. Not only will Fitness+ not kill the Keepers, but it will also bring new vitality to the sports content market.

The addition of new players is a good thing for both the market and ordinary users.

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