Runtastic adds a range of gadgets to its mobile app

Popular fitness and run tracking application Runtastic announced this week that it will be launching its own range of devices to enable users to track their workouts even more accurately.

Runtastic is a pretty big player in the mobile fitness app market, it’s had more than 5 million downloads in total and 1.4 million in January alone. It’s probably so popular because its online portal caters for seven different languages and it’s available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry AND Windows devices. Aside from the fact it’s a pretty accurate app too, of course.

Due to the popularity of its app, the company has decided to bring out a number of new fitness gadgets, that’ll be able to feed data to both the app and the web portal. For now these will include a GPS-enabled watch that measures your pulse and a chest strap with a heart rate monitor. Interestingly, the GPS watch tracks all kinds of data about your heart rate and location, but doesn’t even require you to have a smartphone, you can just access the information via the web, which is great for those who don’t always like taking their phones with them when they run. The chest strap tracks your heart rate too and then sends the information to a receiver that can be plugged into the user’s smart phone in the audio socket.

Big brands like Nike and Adidas already have a number of popular apps and gadgets as part of their fitness ranges, but it’s good to see smaller organisations try and get into the space too. Of course, whether they’ll be able to compete with the big boys obviously remains to be seen, but we like the healthy competition.

Florian Gschwandtner, CEO of Runtastic, said:

“We have gotten a lot of feedback of users the last two years. It was a logical next step to integrate this knowledge in the development of our own fitness hardware. As an entrepreneurs view we are widening our value chain which will affect our growth strategy.”

If this latest news has convinced you that you’ve got to get your hands on the Runtastic app, then you can download it here.

The products will be available in Runtastic’s online shop and at selected retail stores.

Becca Caddy