Flurry just released a great study that says health and fitness app usage on iOS is growing at double the rate of the overall app usage growth. This is a cool insight on its own, but I was most interested in the persona research– in other words, who is driving this usage growth?
Women are using these apps somewhat more frequently than men. The demographic groups using these health and fitness apps the most are:
- Sports Fans
- People interested in Parenting and Education
- Avid Runners
If you look at the study, you’ll also see that the usage growth is concentrated in the 35 to 54 and the 25 to 34 age brackets.
I’m not surprised that the 18 to 24 age bracket isn’t using these apps, because many of these people are beyond youth and scholastic sports and haven’t reached the point in their lives where they feel they need fitness goals.
I am using RunKeeper most right now, and I like the personal friend and social media integration (Facebook) that it provides. I’ve said that it helps me to be a bit to get encouragement from people when they see that I’ve hit the road for another workout.
I’m also convinced that Apple had an eye on this trend for a while now, and that’s why we are seeing the push for including HealthKit in iOS 8 that we saw at WWDC.
Credits
Credits for the chart to Flurry from their study discussed in this post.