As health concerns and consciousness begin to reach beyond the realm of trendy work banter and into genuinely committed lifestyle changes, there's been an insurgence of tech companies looking to capitalize on this newfound niche. Nike brought us Fit and the Fuel Band after providing a shoe device and app to track your runs. Apple gave us arm and chest bands to hold our iPods, and once upon a time McDonald's even offered step counters, Happy Meal-style, with the purchase of any of their signature salads.
These innovations have grown at a consistent and creative pace, as most readily noted by the Nintendo's introduction of Wii Fit and fitness oriented games. If there were ever a bandwagon to join proudly, this is it.
The newest innovators to join the arms (pecs, thighs and abs) race is tech giant Google. Since they are known for having their hand in just about every aspect of the human life, it's about time they started contributing to the preservation of it. With Google's developer conference, Google I/O, swiftly approaching many people believe they'll take this time to debut a potential new addition to their software family called "Google Fit".
While there are more questions than answers, "Google Fit" will collect and aggregate your health info from various popular fitness trackers and health-related apps (here's what Google says so far). If this sounds familiar that's because it's practically identical to the announcement Apple made at WWDC earlier this month regarding their own "Healthkit" being rolled out in the new iOS8. And if you're really in the know, you've heard of Samsung's "Sami" which will also be coming to a gym rat near you.
Sources reported to Forbes that not only will Google Fit collect and compile this data, the program will also be able to communicate with wearable devices and store data in the cloud, creating what will be referred to as the Google Fit ecosystem. This now raises the question of whether or not Google Fit will be pushed out to existing Android devices and built into the new ones. Independent of that, will Google Fit be accessible away from mobile or will the Google Fit ecosystem include Google integration with rich data able to be viewed online with the other Google apps? And probably the most important question, how well will Samsung's "Sami" and the proposed "Google Fit" play together?
While wearables are also a budding area of interest, it seems as though they're taking a backseat to the competition and benefitting entirely from a wide range of ways in which they dispense their collected data. Rightly so, with the number of wearables available for tracking various bodily functions, the last thing I want to have to decide is what operating system I'm going to be unfaithful to.
At the moment, a lot of this is firmly reliable speculation, but with Google I/O just around the corner all questions will soon be answered. Guess you know that means...a few more days until your fitness resolutions transform from "I'll get to it" into an all-expense paid guilt trip.
Anna Gale is a marketer at Fueled, the leading iPhone app builder in New York City, renowned for its award winning mobile design and strategy.