Healthcare Technology Featured Article

October 08, 2012

Smartphones Expected to Change How You Remain Fit, Hints ABI's Research Results


With major smartphone operating systems supporting the free turn-by-turn navigation, ABI’s research shows that finding a combination of applications and advertising utilizing this service to deliver fitness enhancement solutions are necessary for the sustenance of a healthy location-based services (LBS) market.

The fitness and health app section continues to grow steadily with the app download statistics expected to hit the 100M mark this year. Despite the growth, revenue collection will remain low until most companies fully adopt the freemium model, which is the best approach to selling mobile app-based content.

Apart from the fitness and health sector, ABI research findings also indicate that some fields, like tracking market, already have some established masters of trade. For instance, life360 and Sprint lead with total downloads in 2012 expected to hit the 37 million mark. The research also forecasts growth in the enterprise sector since it is currently in its second wave of growth.


Image via Shutterstock

Commenting on the findings, senior analyst, Patrick Connolly, acknowledged that the advert side of the LBS business is still dragging, unlike the “search and discovery” vertical, which continues to gather significant interest for different enterprises. For instance, around 70 percent of Yelp’s 2011 revenue is from local advertising, 78 million monthly active users, and partnerships with Apple and Microsoft. He concluded by saying, “However, attrition continues in this space with Poynt (previously targeting 40M users by the end of 2012) filing for bankruptcy.”

Big players in the market like TeleNav, TCS, and Telmap have illustrated the urgent need to venture into carrier navigation, hence increasing the demand for new applications, business models and emerging regions. For Europe, where roaming is still an issue for off-board solutions, companies hint that carriers still view navigation as a crucial aspect in the wooing of high-end users.

The ABI research gives a detailed study and a quantitative analysis of the trends in global connectivity and other emergent technologies. The organization has offices in North America, Europe and Asia. This, coupled with a worldwide team of experts, are tasked with advising thousands of decision makers through some more than 70 research and advisory services.




Edited by Brooke Neuman
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