Google Steps Up To Challenge Apple In mHealth Arena

The battle for mobile app market dominance between Google – whose Andriod platform that powers the majority of cell phones on the market – and Apple – whose app store dominates in downloads and developer interest – has opened a new front: mobile health.

Google has announced the launch of Google Fit at the upcoming Google I/O 2014. GoogleFit, with its ability to collect and aggregate the data from fitness tracking devices and health-related apps, will directly challenge Apple’s recently announced mHealth program HealthKit.

This is not Google’s first foray into this area—the company launched and withdrew Google Health between 2008 and 2012, though the Google Fit iteration of mHealth focuses on wearable device data instead of information from providers. Google’s main strength in entering this market is it flexibility and openness to third party wearables, and well as a set of its own, Android Wear—that all incorporate easily into the aggregating program, reports Seeking Alpha.

Apple’s advantage remains in its dominance among developers, who will be writing to the new mHealth push by Apple.

“With more than 800 million iOS devices sold worldwide, the opportunity for developers is huge,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, in a released statement. “This is the biggest iOS release since the launch of the App Store. The iOS 8 SDK delivers more than 4,000 new APIs including amazing new frameworks, greater extensibility and a revolutionary new programming language.”

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