Read the latest stories related to fitness, health, and wellness from Insider Intelligence.
1. Q&A: How Peloton is building its brand into a digital platform
Robert Franklin, senior vice president of ecommerce at Peloton Interactive, leads the product and technology teams to improve the shopping experience for the company’s bikes, treadmills, accessories, subscriptions, and more.
Insider Intelligence: How are you adapting the Peloton platform to meet consumers' changing needs?
Robert Franklin: The piece that takes the ecommerce platform to the next level is opening it up to third-party developers and third-party content creators, so you're more of a platform and less of a service. Any platform that starts to develop where anyone can be a content creator and developer, like on the Alexa and Echo platforms, allows the company to build out wonderful customer experiences.
2. Meta finds a fitness pipeline in the Apple ecosystem
The metaverse will finally meet Apple’s walled garden when Oculus Quest 2 headset users receive an update that lets them send their workout data to Apple’s Health app.
Why it’s worth watching: The metaverse is a mostly isolated VR ecosystem, but a new update to Meta’s VR headsets will let users share their fitness data with Apple Health, which could result in wider adoption, per AppleInsider.
Learn more about VR fitness in the metaverse.
3. Apple delivers wearables win despite supply chain crunch
The global wearables market hit a record number of shipments in Q4 2021 at 171 million units, up nearly 11% from the year prior, per new IDC data.
How we got here: Consumer demand was driven primarily by interest in health- and fitness-tracking products, and Apple dominated the wearables market yet again.
What’s next for smartwatch vendors lagging behind Apple? Healthcare consumers are worried about privacy—a factor Apple competitors could take into account more this year to prop up the value of their wearables in the eyes of potential customers.