Health and fitness app industry down by 9% in 2017

The health and fitness app industry declined 9 per cent from 2016 to 2017 worldwide, while there was a massive growth with the usage growing by over 330 per cent in just three years since 2014, a survey by Flurry from Oath -- a global mobile analytics firm -- has revealed.

To understand the slowdown, the health and fitness market was segmented into four sub-categories: workout and weight loss, general health, nutrition, and studios and fitness content.

The findings showed that the largest subcategory, "workout and weight loss", showed a significantly slower year-over-year growth rate. From 67 per cent in 2015, it went down to 11 per cent in 2016.

While "nutrition" apps showed a decline of 26 per cent, apps for "studio and fitness" content showed a 49 per cent growth in 2016.

However, the "general health" category revealed stagnation 41 per cent in the last two years.

Further, the survey data shows that users are highly committed to their fitness apps.

Out of active health and fitness app users, 96 per cent are using at least one health and fitness app.

While more than 75 per cent of active users were found to open their health and fitness app at least two times a week, over 25 per cent of users accessed their fitness apps more than 10 times a week.

Wearables, such as fitness bands and smartwatches, have also seen significant growth. Gartner forecasted that there would be over 310 million wearables sold in 2017, which would be an increase of 16.7 per cent to 2016.

For the survey, Flurry reviewed the health and fitness app industry based on app usage of over 1,000,000 apps across all app categories, providing insights into 2.1 billion devices.

--IANS

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