How Did UA Enter The Sports Field In 2016?

The first response given by Under Armour is HealthBox and Record.

Seven years ago, Fitbit launched its first sport bracelet. Four years ago, Nike expanded the wearable field through FuelBand, and Under Armour began to launch its first set.

Hardware, is it late?

No, in fact, the company, known for its sports training clothes, has quietly dominated the field of sports fitness.

At the recent CES 2016 conference, Under Armour announced a partnership with IBM, and will jointly develop a app UA Record, which combines sports exercise and health management. Along with the software iteration plan, there are also a series of hardware devices, namely HealthBox.

What is HealthBox?

This is a set of intelligent hardware developed with HTC, including Bracelet UA Band, weight scale UA Scale, and heart rate recording UA band Heart Rate Rate.

It can also work with the previous UA Speedform Gemini 2 sneakers and JBL headphones.

First, let's talk about UA Band. If you still remember the HTC Grip project, the product that has been delayed for a long time, it has appeared in a completely new way with the support of Under Armor technology.

UA Band has a very important position in the $400 HealthBox HealthBox. It has a smooth, curved display, black and red wristbands, and physical buttons on the side, which is reminiscent of Nike's FuelBand.

Through the UA Band curving screen, you can show your movement, including running, cycling, weightlifting and walking, all of which can be customized in UA Record.

But it does not contain GPS (HTC Grip has planned to join GPS function) and heart rate monitoring function, which sounds very close to the location of Fitbit Charge HR.

When it comes to heart rate monitoring, there is also a very interesting product, UA Heart Rate, in the HealthBox.

This is a heart rate monitoring chest belt worn on the chest. It has an optical sensor to record movement before recording the resting heart rate (not the active heart rate) before and after exercise.

The location of UA Heart Rate makes up some of the missing functions on UA Band, and also subdivides the usage scenarios.

And the official said that the UA Heart Rate can be fully charged in half an hour for five days.

When you match these two hardware products through Record, all motion information, including MapMyRun, can be seamlessly integrated.

However, it has been reported that, because the GPS is not used, but the accelerometer is used to calculate, the two hardware are slightly deficient in accuracy. Under Armour plans to upgrade firmware in the next version.

UA Band and UA Heart Rate are all products launched with exercise training, while UA Scale is designed to match MyFitnessPal MyFitnessPal applications.

Like other scales, it can measure body weight and body fat, and pmit data to Record.

If you are using MyFitnessPal at the same time, it will become very powerful. By continuous recording of users, MyFitnessPal can analyze the weight pounds that you need to reduce (increase). When you stand next to UA Scale, it will tell you how far away from the target.

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In addition, UA Speedform Gemini series sneakers are part of this product matrix, tracking the data of your running through the sensors built on the bottom of the running shoes and recording them in applications such as Record or MapMyRun.

It is more accurate than any bracelet or cell phone. Of course, I would rather not take these things when I run.

In the field of smart wearable, Under Armour is a bit late, but it can take a lot of steps. As I mentioned above a series of software applications mentioned above, it is necessary to talk about UA Record application.

What is Record?

As I said in the opening paragraph, Under Armour released a high-profile version of the app at the CES conference, which aims to become a simplified exercise fitness tracking and manage personal health in the CES conference.

And mobile terminals that connect digital communities.

This means that Under Armour has already taken the lead in Nike to get through the software and hardware in the field of sports and health. In this battle of digital sports and health hegemony, UA has taken a big step forward.

In the "Apps and device management" of Record, we can see that in addition to a series of hardware products, such as MyFitnessPal, and so on, we have already connected the data connection, and we have access to many third party products such as Jawbone, Misfit and Fitbit, and iOS and Android version also have access to the health center of the system level.

In the four main tab of the bottom, community and social elements occupy a large part.

On CES, Under Armour also promotes the social attributes of Record Record through many sports stars. Users can record health data on them, challenge their friends, check the daily or weekly rankings, and encourage each other.

"Every company is running products in their respective segments, but no one has assembled them. We are building an open platform," said Kevin Plank Plank, founder of Under Armour.

From software to intelligent hardware, product matrix is formed.

If we look closely at the trend of Under Armour over the past two years, our ambitions begin with the acquisition of MapMyFitness. After that, we have acquired MyFitnessPal and Endomondo, among which MyFitnessPal is the most popular calorie management application in the market, with more than 65 million users.

In Under Armour's matrix plan, acquiring third party software, accumulating users and technology is the first step.

Next is to expand the hardware peripherals, first add intelligent tracking elements to the traditional sports equipment that they are good at, and the intelligent hardware that is not good at working with mainstream hardware vendors, such as HTC and JBL, is a very clever method.

As a result, Under Armour has all the strength from entry-level users (to software records) to heavy users (software and hardware), from front-end hardware support to back-end software analysis, from sports to fitness to health management.

So it started the march of the next node -- the construction of the software and hardware ecosystem. Obviously, the same kind of manufacturers did not do this.

That's why Under Armour attaches so much importance to Record.

Although Nike+ platform has accumulated advantages over the past 10 years, its Running and Training products have become quite popular. However, Nike has never had a platform to get all its product lines open, which is also the key to forming a closed loop for an ecosystem.

So although Under Armour is still behind Nike and Adidas in general, but in recent years, the crazy growth (sales volume in the US market has stabilized second), accompanied by the combination of traditional sports equipment and technology.

Let it become one of the three biggest hegemony, which also confirms the idea of UA, which has always been "using technology to kill the tradition".

Finally, I want to conclude this article with the dialogue between MapMyFitness CEO Robin Thurston and Kevin Plank. When Thurston asked, "Under Armour is too late to enter, FuelBand has already appeared", Plank said:

When you see the next technology coming, it means there is still a long way to go. Now, we think that the time is ripe.