Activity-tracking devices by the likes of Nike, Fitbit and Jawbone have been growing steadily more popular over the last year, working with companion apps to track people's daily steps and encourage their efforts to get fitter.
Finnish startup Moves [1] took a different approach when it launched in December 2012: it junked the idea of a separate device. Instead, its iPhone app used the sensors in Apple 's smartphone to track walking, cycling and running, while also storing details of where those activities happened.
It's been pretty popular. "We didn't expect it to pick up so quickly, but it's now been downloaded over 2.5m times on iPhone, and we are now tracking more than 2bn steps a day," says designer and chief executive Sampo Karjalainen.
"Most activity-tracking gadgets don't really give out numbers, but Jawbone says it is tracking more than 1bn steps a day, so we are starting to feel that Moves may be the most popular activity-tracker."
That wouldn't be a surprise, given that Moves is a free app that doesn't require users to buy a separate gadget. Karjalainen says that the decision to focus purely on smartphone sensors was partly an attempt to take activity-tracking beyond early adopters.
"We wanted to make a mainstream product for people who are not that into sports or the quantified self," he says. "That's also why we have kept the app very simple, clear and approachable, with that element of lifelogging â€" the complete story of your day â€" that makes for a different experience to the more fitness -oriented products."
Today, Moves is taking a new step beyond iPhone, launching a version for Android smartphones : initially for a selection of handsets running the Android 4.0 software and upwards, with hopes of expanding beyond that in the coming months.
Karjalainen says Moves is excited about being able to support Android â€" unsurprisingly, given its dominant market share in the smartphones world â€" and is refreshingly un-grumbly about the challenges involved in porting the app across.
"The main problem is the scale of different devices, which behave a little bit differently, especially when it comes to the barometer. And some of them don't work very reliably in the background, for example when we try to collect acceleration samples," he says.
"But we have worked around those problems, and it's looking good. The additional battery hit is a bit smaller compared to iPhone too, although many Android users have all kinds of crazy apps that already affect the battery use quite a bit. But we're very excited."
Once the Android version of Moves launches, the company will start to focus more on helping people make sense of the data that the app is collecting on a daily basis.
"The next goal is to build the next level of analysis on top of this data: to summarise it and show interesting insights about your life," he says.
"Not so much the traditional charts about how activities change over time that you see in other apps. That feels very data-driven, and in some ways a little lazy if you are showing a graph and asking the user to analyse it."
Instead, Moves is hoping to find the "stories in the data" for people using Moves, as much about helping them to understand and change their behaviour (if they want to) than simply providing a daily score.
Karjalainen is keen not to start badgering Moves users to get fitter and walk, cycle and/or run further, though. "If you have a good day, we celebrate it a little bit, but we don't really push you," he says.
"When we did our initial research, we interviewed a lot of people who don't do much physical activity, and who don't feel they're very good at it. If it becomes a competitive situation and someone is nagging them all the time, they don't find it very appealing."
In recent months, people have started to ask more questions about the privacy policies of activity-tracking apps : what data they're collecting, how they're storing it and what other companies they might be sharing it with.
"We did our best to write our privacy policy in very plain and clear English, so if you read it you get some answers," says Karjalainen. "We think it's very important to be very open about it, and we are currently discussing with legal advisers how we can make it even more clear."
Moves has more than 20 partners using its Connected Apps API One of the strengths of activity-tracking apps as things stand is their ability to share your data, though. It's standard practise for fitness, nutrition and activity-tracking apps to either run their own APIs or to tie into those of other apps, enabling these services to be connected together by users.
Moves is part of that trend too: it has a Connected Apps catalogue [2] of more than 20 other iPhone apps that use its API, with plans to extend this to Android.
"We can't develop every feature, so we have provided this open API where users can give permission to a third party to use their data from Moves," says Karjalainen. "We think it can provide a lot of value to people to be able to combine their data with other services."
What's next? Moves is currently assessing the likely impact of Apple's new iPhone 5s smartphone, with its M7 motion co-processor that will seemingly enable any activity-tracking app to get the kind of data from the device's sensors that has been Moves' key feature.
In other words, while the M7 could be most disruptive for the companies trying to sell separate gadgets, it could also open Moves up to much more competition. Karjalainen seems relaxed about the implications though.
"In general, it's a really good thing for activity-tracking and the quantified self. Battery use has been the biggest challenge in this area previously, and Apple are doing the right thing optimising the hardware and software," says Karjalainen.
"We are really happy to use those APIs, but while they work for walking and running, they don't do cycling, so we still need to build a hybrid product, and use a lot of our own technology."
So what's next for Moves? Karjalainen has been following the buzz around wearable gadgets like smart watches with keen interest. Not least because fitness-tracking appears to be one of the key marketing hooks for devices like Samsung's Galaxy Gear .
"We feel it's in the same space as FitBit or Nike FuelBand or Jawbone and these other gadgets. It's still about buying one more gadget, paying $200 for it and then remembering to charge, carry and synchronise one more device," he says.
"That's not a mainstream thing, although it's good for people with motivation to really track their activities. But the phone is really good for the mainstream: there are a billion iPhone and Android smartphones out there."
Moves will continue to monitor the space, though, having noted speculation about Apple and Google's plans to build their own smart watches. "If Google or Apple build a new wearable platform, it would make a lot of sense to use those gadgets for activity-tracking," says Karjalainen.
On a philosophical level, Moves is also deciding how much to edge towards lifelogging, using location data and other content to build an even more detailed picture of each user's day.
"There is a lot of data that can be connected, from your calendar entries, the communication you do with your phone, the music you listen to, the photos you take. You could end up with an automatic diary, packaged into very beautiful stories," he says.
"But for now we say that we will stay in activity-tracking and gradually expand to life-tracking and making sense of life. We are a small startup, and we can't do everything!"
The big question is how Moves plans to make money, given that it's not selling physical hardware, its app is free, and advertising isn't part of the mix. The concern around apps of this type is that their users will be the products: business models involving selling their data to third parties.
That doesn't appear to be on Moves roadmap. Karjalainen says its main plan is to add new features to its app paid for via in-app purchases.
"Premium features for people who really want to be more goal-oriented: who want to increase their physical activity through things like exercise programmes," he says. And definitely no shady data-selling behind the scenes?
"Data can be a really and interesting and valuable thing, particularly when we have millions and millions of users, but you would need to do it in such a way that users understand how their data is being used, and they approve," he says.
Links
- ^ Moves (moves-app.com)
- ^ Connected Apps catalogue (apps.moves-app.com)
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