Under Armour Speeds Up The Pace Of Intelligence.

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Baltimore, USA, the founder of Kevin Plank is a former Maryland football star.

Its sports stars include basketball player Stephen Currie, swimmer Phelps, golf player Spiess, tennis player Andy Murray and so on.

In November 18, 2005, UA went public in the US.

After that, UA began to enter the United Kingdom, China, Japan and other overseas countries after 2011.

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In April 2011, UA opened its first exclusive store in Shanghai port Hui square.

UA for 18 consecutive months of revenue growth of more than 20%, UA in 2014 in the United States

The market has surpassed Adidas, which has been occupying second places, and has become another brand with sales of over 1 billion dollars.

Intelligent development of UA

Since 2011, UA has invited inventions, personal inventors and teams from all over the world to Baltimore global headquarters to participate in the "UA future innovation competition".

On the two day innovation competition, the contestants display their products, and the winners can get $50000 and UA's investment opportunities.

Compared with the Nike+, the UA intelligent process is very fast even though it starts late.

Acquiring company

As early as 2013, UA paid heavily for MapMyFitness, which includes mobile applications such as MapMyFitness, MapMyRun, MapMyRide, MapMyHike and MapMyWalk. Users can use these software to carry out heart rate analysis, personalized training programs, voice coaching and other services.

In 2015, UA bought the sports health software Endomondo and the health slimming software MyFitnessPal, based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

He has accumulated more users overseas, and has created a closed loop from different areas of sports health.

Two build a community

In 2015, UA collaborated with intelligent electronic brand HTC to develop UARecord, a sports technology social software.

Users can record and analyze motion data on this platform, and allow users to share these contents, thus forming a fitness social circle.

Unlike Nike+, in addition to recording and analyzing motion data, this platform pays more attention to users' social needs.

The total cost of the three applications purchased by UA is 710 million US dollars, but it also brings more than 130 million users, far higher than the number of users activated by Nike+.

These users not only become the potential consumers of UA, but also become a member of the healthy eco community that UA wants to build, and jointly promote the development and accumulation of overseas users.

After the acquisition of these companies by UA, these software download rates showed a high growth rate in a short time, attracting one million new users every eight days on average.

Three developing intelligent hardware

In 2013, UA first tested water sports intelligent hardware.

Against the previously launched FuelBand of Nike, they developed a sports performance monitoring system called Armour39.

Users wear a chest to record their own motion data, such as speed, intensity, heart rate, heat consumption and so on.

In 2016, UA launched a sports wireless headset, JBLUNDERARMOUR, with the headset brand JBL.

At the CES exhibition in 2016, UA and HTC jointly released the Internet fitness system, UAHealthBox, for monitoring and managing a series of factors that affect people's health.

At the same time, there are three wearable devices available, namely smart Bracelet UABand, heart rate belt UAHeartRate and intelligent weight scale UAScale.

From software to hardware, UA has gradually formed its own system, and UA has more platforms to further develop the female market.

The significance of intelligence to UA

The intellectualization of sports equipment has gradually evolved from relatively simple motion data acquisition to the analysis of professional data with more powerful functions and more accurate information.

The users of products also infiltrate from the general sports training crowd to more professional sports individuals and teams.

Sports intelligent business has gradually become one of the most important business components of major companies.

According to UA's latest earnings report, UA's profit in the second quarter of 2016 dropped from $13 million 760 thousand in the same period last year to $6 million 340 thousand, a sharp fall of 57%.

But its interconnection fitness business ConnectedFitness revenue growth is as high as 73.3%, revenue is $23 million 490 thousand, ConnectedFitness Internet fitness business business losses significantly reduced.

Intelligent layout provides a new growth point for the future of UA.

With the combination of hardware and software in the field of sports and health, UA's sports and health community has begun to take shape.

From entry-level users to heavy users, from sports, fitness to health management, UA has made a relatively complete layout.

Through the huge data brought by the huge user community, it can provide the driving force and direction for UA from product development to promotion and sales to the whole chain.

On the other hand, although UA maintains a strong growth momentum, there is still a big gap to shake Nike's position in the sports market.