Healthcare Technology Featured Article

November 30, 2011

Sports and Health Mobile Application Market to Grow Substantially


According to a recent study by ABIresearch, the sports and health mobile application market will grow to over $400 million in 2016 – up from just $120 million in 2010.

Mobile handsets will affect the healthcare market with improvements in home monitoring systems for aging users, personal emergency response services and remote healthcare monitoring applications.

By resorting to remote monitoring, healthcare providers are expected to save between $1.96 billion and $5.83 billion in healthcare costs by the year 2014.

A study by the Consumer Electronics Association, CEA, looked at consumer perceptions and attitudes with using technology for health and wellness and found that consumers are open to using new gadgets and technologies to communicate with doctors and improve their overall health.

Weightloss and nutritional guidance were the top motives.

However, sports and fitness will dominate the mobile health application market.

“Downloadable apps are moving the sports tracking device market from proprietary devices to mobile phones, but adoption has been limited by the data they can collect,” said Jonathan Collins, principal analyst. “However, with the connectivity that Bluetooth Smart will embed in mobile handsets, wearable devices will bring greater detail to mobile handsets.”

Handset connections to wearable devices are also adding to the sports monitoring market.

Technology like the Adidas’ miCoach SPEED_CELL gadget monitors athletes’ performance metrics such as speed, distance and time and wirelessly transmits the data to a smartphone.

Athletic equipment players have moved to support handset applications by either using proprietary or battery-draining traditional Bluetooth wireless. Traditional players such as Garmin and Polar will increasingly have to compete directly with the mobile handset, and eventually new candidates offering applications, online communities and wearable devices offering a range of applications and services.

Research and Markets released a report that analyzes the current mobile handsets market as well as anticipated developments in the 4G handset marketplace. The report is titled, “4G Handsets: Evaluating the Impact of LTE, Applications, and Anticipated Usage.”


Rachel Ramsey is a HealthTechZone editorial assistant, contributing news items and feature articles on a variety of communications and technology topics. Rachel has previously worked in PR and communications at The Wriglesworth Consultancy, an award-winning London PR firm. She has also contributed to the creative services department at CBS 3 and The CW Philly in Philadelphia. To read more of Rachel's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell
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