Health and Sports: Apple's Fitness+ still under review, Health+ postponed?
Apple apparently remains uncertain about the future of its in-house sports service. Plans for a health payment service are now reportedly on hold.
Person with smartwatch during training.
(Image: Subbotina Anna/Shutterstock.com)
Apple's sports service Fitness+, which costs 9.99 euros per month, still seems to be in a review phase for the iPhone manufacturer. Since last autumn, there have been repeated reports that the iPhone manufacturer might discontinue or at least change the offering with various courses discontinue or at least change, as it is said to be one of the company's weakest subscription services. There is also news about a planned health subscription called Health+.
Fitness+ plus Apple Health?
The new information comes from Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. In his newsletter from the weekend, he writes that Fitness+ remains “under review” at Apple. It is not yet possible to say how the service will proceed. However, Gurman can imagine that Apple will combine the existing Health app with a kind of “bundle subscription” with Fitness+.
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Apple is being attacked by competitors on several fronts here: In addition to special hardware products such as fitness rings with matching apps, which are more comfortable to wear than the Apple Watch, OpenAI and Anthropic are also trying their hand in the health business, and also want to evaluate iPhone data. Fitness+ was recently somewhat restructured internally, receiving more content.
Management Restructuring and Approvals
It remains unclear what will become of Apple's health offering, Health+, which has apparently been planned for months. Here, the company apparently intended to extract more data from the previously free Health app functions to provide more precise recommendations. In addition, videos and other content were planned to help people with better healthcare – for example, with wellness tips.
Apple also allegedly wanted to cooperate with external laboratories. However, a real service is unlikely to emerge from this for now. The “AI health coach,” which ran under the codename Mulberry, has already been scaled back internally. One of the reasons is said to have been management changes – Apple's COO Jeff Williams retired, and the organization is now dependent on services boss Eddy Cue. However, it is also conceivable that Apple saw difficulties in obtaining the necessary approvals for a more detailed health service. New features in this area always require longer approval times.
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