Fitbit Customer Experience a Bridge to Digital Health Platform

Last year, Fitbit introduced several new products that added important new capabilities that changed the market for connected fitness wearables and devices, according to Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Park. This year, Park believes Fitbit can build on its incredible customer engagement achieved in 2015.

Park believes the company began 2016 with strong customer engagement and retention, an accelerating pace of innovation, and competitive differentiation.

Consider the following numbers Fitbit released during Monday’s fourth-quarter and full-year conference call:

Sold 21.4 million connected health and fitness devices

FY15 revenue increased 149% year-over-year; adjusted EBITDA increased 104%

U.S. comprised 74% of FY15 revenue; EMEA 11%, APAC 10%, and Other Americas 5%

U.S. revenue grew 146% year-over-year; EMEA 244%, APAC 110%, and Other Americas 139%

Fourth Quarter 2015 and Recent Fitbit Operational Highlights
Active users grew 152%, to 16.9 million at year-end 2015 from 6.7 million at year-end 2014

Added 18.0 million new registered device users in 2015, of which 13.0 million, 72%, were active users at year-end; Total year-end 2015 registered device users was 29.0 million

Introduced Fitbit BlazeTM and Fitbit AltaTM. Fitbit Blaze won 18 top-pick awards at CES

Pre-order volume for Alta and Blaze exceeded internal forecasts; Blaze was already ranked second last week in Amazon’s best-selling smartwatches over $100

Introduced SmartTrackTM automatic exercise tracking

New partnerships with Public School, Westin, and Thermos

“Our 2015 growth in the U.S. and in 62 other countries around the world, demonstrated that people’s desire for data, inspiration, guidance, and pursuing their fitness journeys is a worldwide movement,” Park said, according to Seeking Alpha. “While Fitbit is known as a consumer brand, the real potential of our brand and technology is to become a digital health platform that improves people's health and integrates into the healthcare ecosystem.”

Digital health, Park noted, refers to the emergence of powerful technologies that, combined, can help people lead healthier lives, reduce healthcare costs, and broaden the reach of Fitbit’s healthcare system.

“These technologies include what Fitbit is already pioneering, more powerful sensors that continuously monitor useful biometrics, mass success of health data in the cloud where analytics enable insights and guidance and coaching to help consumers make important changes to their lifestyles and daily behaviors,” he explained. “We also believe that preventative care will be a much more visible and important part of the entire healthcare system and that one significant outcome of digital health will be to make health data more actionable and meaningful when it comes to maintaining people’s health.”

Fitbit’s platform consists of devices, apps, social motivational features, advice, and personalized coaching aimed at helping people make key behavioral changes to be more active, exercise more, eat smarter, eat better, and manage their weight.

“These are exactly the kinds of behavioral changes that experts in diabetes, hypertension, asthma, obesity, and sleep apnea, as well as mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, believe can change the course of those diseases,” Park said. “The size of the problem we address is enormous. For example, the world health organization reported in 2015 that 39% of adults globally, 3 billion people are overweight. Let me give you some more tangible examples of the early part of our journey toward digital health.”

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