Apple announced Health and HealthKit at WWDC 2014, an app and platform to go alongside it, allowing users to input health and fitness data into the Health app and send it to other health and fitness third party applications using the HealthKit API.
Google wants to do things a little different and Google Fit will be the name of the health application. The app will be announced at Google I/O on June 24, according to sources familiar with Google’s plans. The move will put Google in the health game, in time for the launch of the iWatch.
This is not the first time Google has tried to enter the health market, in 2012 they had to close Google Health due to inactivity. The problem with Health was it needed manual aggregation of statistics from the user, something most Internet users don’t want to add on the Web.
Google Fit will be a much more automatic and seamless transition for users, automatically gathering data from the sensors on mobiles and wearables and sending the information to third party services and the Google Fit app, bettering the Android ecosystem for health and fitness apps.
We are interested to see how Google differentiate from HealthKit, considering Apple’s move has been so welcoming and simple for users and developers. Google needs to work on making sure everyone understands the privacy and security on Android, enough to share private health information on the OS.
Google Fit will also be a contender against Samsung’s SAMI concept, another trump on the South Korean giant’s software. If Google Fit becomes compatible with third party apps we see little love for SAMI in the next few years, since Samsung cannot integrate this way.
We will have to wait and see what implementations and features Google Fit has before judging it against HealthKit, but from early reports it should be a big contender for Android users.
