RunKeeper's app.
A casual mention tucked into the press release on Nike's latest ad campaign sparked some interest from The Next Web last week, as Nike revealed that its Nike+ ecosystem now has more than 18 million users. While that statistic certainly sounds impressive, it might be helpful to put it in some context.
Many fitness companies -- particularly device makers like Fitbit and Jawbone -- have never released user numbers, or haven't shared them for some time. Others, especially app communities like MapMyFitness and Endomondo, share user base numbers in every press release. Like all self-reported numbers, these should be taken with a grain of salt. What does "18 million users" mean? Is it how many people have downloaded the app? For startups with multiple apps, does it count them all separately (potentially counting some people twice)? Or is it the number of active, signed up members using the app or device on a regular basis?
Nonetheless, some numbers are out there. Here's seven fitness app companies that have recently shared or let slip the size of their user base. Read on to see how they stack up.
MyFitnessPal: 40 million users
MyFitnessPal, a free nutrition and fitness tracking website and app suite, shared a figure of 40 million members when it announced its $18 million funding raise earlier this month. At the time, the company said it was adding 1.5 million users a month. Back in October 2012, MyFitnessPal put out a press release proclaiming 30 million users. If the company's numbers are accurate, it dwarfs the other entries on this list and is still growing.
MyFitnessPal has an open API through which it's partnered with almost every major company in the space: Fitbit, Withings, Jawbone, Runkeeper, Runtastic, and Endomondo, just to name a few. The company began in September 2005 and has been turning a profit since its launch, only seeking outside funding for the first time this month.
RunKeeper: 22.5 million users
RunKeeper's user base, according to the company.
On the occasion of its fifth "birthday," fitness tracking app RunKeeper shared that its user base had just hit 22.5 million members, quite a bit above average. The company also provided a graph showing that the user base is growing on a steep curve, with 5 million users added between January and June of this year. RunKeeper parent company FitnessKeeper raised $10 million back in late 2011, and was the first app to integrate with early smartwatch sensation Pebble.
Azumio: 20 million downloads
Azumio has been making health apps since it launched its Instant Heart Rate app in 2010. With its recent launch of Argus, though, the company is transitioning into a comprehensive all-day tracker. The 20 million figure comes from Azumio's website, which states that "Azumio is a leader in biofeedback health apps on mobile devices with more than 20 million downloads to date on both iOS and Android platforms." That's downloads across all of the company's apps. The figure becomes less impressive up against this press release from 2011 saying that Instant Heart Rate had passed 10 million downloads one year after launch. Two years later, growth seems to have slowed down by half.
Update: Azumio CEO Bojan Bostjancic is now telling MobiHealthNews Azumio's apps have a combined 45 million downloads.
Nike+: 18 million users
In their recent press release, Nike boasted that "the Nike+ digital ecosystem has more than 18 million global members." That ecosystem includes more than just the Nike+ Fuelband, it encompasses smartphone apps, simple accelerometer shoe inserts, pre-loaded software on the iPod Nano, and an Xbox training game. It also includes the 10 startups that participated in the Nike+ Techstars accelerator that wrapped up in June. The Wall Street Journal has compared the fitness company to Apple in its push to become a digital platform. Apple has a number of connections to Nike, and as it develops its rumored smartwatch, it's likely to integrate Fuelband functions, a future that seems more and more likely as Apple hires away top Fuelband talent.
As a company with hardware, Nike is a standout on this list: other fitness tracker makers like Fitbit, Jawbone, and BodyMedia aren't sharing their download or sales numbers on their websites or in recent press releases.
MapMyFitness: 18 million active users
MapMyFitness makes a bolder claim than most in its most recent press release, relating to the app's integration with the Jawbone UP, saying that "MapMyFitness has an active community of over 18 million members." When MapMyFitness raised $9 million last June, the company put its user base at 9 million as well, suggesting just about a 100 percent growth over the last year. MapMyFitness was one of the first company's to become part of Aetna's CarePass initiative, and recently announced a partnership with Brooks Running Company.
Runtastic: 18 million registered users (40 million downloads)
A quiet but serious contender in the fitness app space since 2009, Austria-based Runtastic caught MobiHealthNews's attention in March 2012, when it announced a transition from software only to software and hardware, adding a chest strap and GPS watch to its offerings. At the time, the company was reporting 5 million downloads and 2 million users. Just over a year later, Runtastic now reports 18 million registered users on its website, and 40 million global downloads, making it almost certainly the fastest-growing app on the list.
Runtastic is one of the only companies to report both downloads and registered users as separate figures.
Endomondo: 16 million users
Endomondo, founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007, claims to have 16 million users in its description in the Google Play store. The company's website also gives a history of Endomondo's growth, saying that it passed a million users in September 2010, 5 million in September 2011, and 12 million in October 2012. The company also announced passing 10 million downloads in June 2012, which appears to be the same thing from the company's perspective (meaning they don't track sustained use).
At the time, Endomondo shared some data about those users, saying that only about 25 percent of its user base was in the US. About ten percent of its users were in the UK and an additional 10 percent lived in Spain, with another 35 percent elsewhere in Europe. About 75 percent of the app’s users were men, but it had seen an 8 percent increase in women downloading the app in the preceding year.
