Is Apple Fitness+ at a Crossroads?
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Apple has dramatically expanded its services portfolio over the past several years, growing from cloud services and music streaming to encompass news, movies, TV shows, games, and even fitness. However, not all of those have been landmark successes.
For example, Apple News+ reportedly had a hard time gaining traction, and many analysts estimate it’s among the least-used of Apple’s services. It’s always been hard to nail down how many people actually subscribe to it, but we suspect most of those who do are getting it as a part of an Apple One Premier bundle — especially after Apple hiked the standalone subscription price to $12.99 two years ago.
It doesn’t help that Apple News+ remains mostly confined to the English-speaking world — available only in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States — although its early 2019 expansion into the Great White North brought French-Canadian support as Canada’s other official language.
Nevertheless, while News+ may not be a hit, the service seems to keep humming along, and Apple has regularly added new features to sweeten the deal, including News+ Audio and a variety of daily puzzles.
However, it seems it’s not the only service Apple has struggled with, and it’s probably telling that the other one is also bundled exclusively in the highest Apple One Premier tier: Apple Fitness+.
Launched in late 2020, Apple Fitness+ is the youngest of Apple’s services, and it appears it’s also received a relatively lukewarm reception among Apple fans, perhaps due to its Apple-centric focus, strong competition from established players like Peloton, and an already-crowded market for at-home workouts.
Designed to be Apple’s answer to workout streaming services from companies like Peloton, Apple Fitness+ promised a series of curated video-based fitness workouts led by professional trainers with a unique ability to integrate with the Apple Watch — which was required to use Fitness+ until 2022.
Apple Fitness+ began with 10 of the most popular workout types, including High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), Core Training, Yoga, Dance, Cycling, and Mindful Cooldown routines. Over the years, Apple has expanded its workouts and trainers, adding new Time to Walk and Time to Run experiences and special workouts aimed at unique target audiences, from new parents to golfers. It’s also now available in 21 countries.
Despite all of its other recent price hikes, Apple has managed to hold the line at $9.99 per month, but while it also gives out generous free trials, it wouldn’t be surprising to discover that most of its subscribers also come through Apple One rather than paying directly.
That’s arguably Apple’s biggest success in retaining Fitness+ subscribers and adding value to its top-tier bundle — effectively giving away Arcade, Fitness+, and News+ for less than the price of paying for 2 TB of iCloud Storage, Apple Music, and Apple TV separately.
In his recent Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman called it one of Apple’s “weakest digital offerings,” saying it suffers from “high churn” and doesn’t earn much money for the company.
Then again, it’s also not about money so much as Apple’s desire to extend its reach by providing everything an iPhone user could need or want. Even Apple TV is the craziest loss leader ever, with a report earlier this year suggesting Apple is losing a billion dollars a year on it. For Apple, maintaining goodwill and ecosystem lock-in often outweighs short-term profit, and, as Gurman notes, Fitness+ has a small but loyal fan base that makes outright cancellation unlikely.
Still, Fitness+ has enough loyalty from its small fan base that Apple can’t simply shut it down without a backlash. And given how inexpensive it is to operate, there’s little incentive for a nearly $4 trillion company to pull the plug — especially if such a move would generate negative headlines.
It’s unlikely that Apple Fitness+ will disappear completely, but Gurman notes that Apple is reevaluating precisely where it will fit in. That’s probably not too surprising after Apple reshuffled its executive ranks last month to fill in the void left by the impending retirement of long-time chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, who also oversaw the wearable, health, and fitness teams.
The new world order puts the health and fitness side of the business squarely under Apple’s services chief, Eddy Cue — arguably where it should have been all along. However, it also merges health and fitness, which were previously two separate and parallel portfolios, under the leadership of Dr. Sumbul Desai, who was previously only responsible for the health side.
Gurman says that will put the service “under fresh pressure to improve results” since it now lives in Apple’s services division alongside Apple Music, Apple TV, and the rest. However, with Apple expected to unveil an AI-powered health coaching service next year, it’s not hard to imagine how Fitness+ fits into that new plan. Most likely, Apple will reimagine Fitness+ as part of a broader “Health+” platform that integrates fitness and health features — though likely at a modestly higher price.
