Under Armour Buys Mobile Workout Veteran Mapmyfitness For $150m As It Looks To Keep Pace In Digital Fitness

While Under Armour has one of the more recognizable brands in the athletic apparel world, the company url was slow out of the gates in the race to digitize and, consequently, is on a mission to modernize and maintain its relevance in an increasingly mobile world. By acquiring MapMyFitness, a leader in fitness and activity tracking for mobile devices, Under Armour now has the foundation on which in plans to build a new, digital training experience and mobile fitness platform. In addition, Under Armour plans to use its latest acquisition to accelerate its plans to enter the biometric measurement and tracking arena. Fitness tracking is a space in which the Baltimore-based company has traditionally lagged behind other athletic giants, like Nike, which launched its social fitness platform back in 2006 (Nike+) and today counts over 20 million members in its ranks. Since then Nike has launched its own successful activity tracker, the Fuelband, as well as a bevy of related mobile fitness apps and even a TechStars-powered startup accelerator . The market for fitness apps, devices and services, while emergent, has been growing like gangbusters over the last few years, and Gartner said in a recent report that it expects the market to grow from $1.6 billion this year to $5 billion by 2016. As a result, a gaggle of companies compete with Nike (and now Under Armour) on the health tracking side with their visit our website own proprietary, wearable devices from established players like Fitbit, Jawbone and Adidas to the more visite site recent entry of tech giants like Google and Apple. As sensors improve and continue to advance, the line between traditional health tracking devices and platforms and more broadly consumer-facing wearables continues to blur, and Under Armour has a long road ahead as it looks to go toe-to-toe with established social fitness communities and their companion apps. <br>Full story: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/14/under-armour-puts-down-150m-to-acquire-fitness-tracking-platform-maymyfitness-and-its-20m-users/