With new fitness collaborations that make it simpler for Apple Watch owners to accrue rewards, purchase items and monitor workouts, Apple unveiled its “Apple Watch Connected” gym effort. The effort aids Apple in creating a whole ecosystem around the smartwatch and offering owners additional places to use it to bolster fitness monitoring, CNBC reported.
Four fitness facilities are part of the effort, and certain locations are becoming active on Thursday. More gyms will become a part of the program at a later time. Partners at rollout encompass Orange Theory, Basecamp Fitness, Crunch Fitness and YMCA. It comes at no cost for fitness facilities to be a part of the program, as long as they satisfy certain conditions of Apple.
A gym that is Apple Watch Connected, in one case, must possess an Apple Watch and iPhone app that enables users to view classes, monitor their fitness and log-in at the fitness facility. The gym also must take Apple Pay, so consumers can use the device to purchase items such as food, water and other merchandise.
Gyms also have to provide a choice for owners of Apple Watch to “earn with Apple Watch.” Crunch Fitness, in one case, will provide consumers with $3 to $4 in weekly credit if they satisfy specific goals such as working out a given amount of time monthly. The credits then go on the bill of the next month.
In separate news, Chinese electronics firm Xiaomi launched its first smartwatch called the Mi Watch per news in November that reportedly has a similar appearance to the Apple Watch. The company is vying with Apple for the top market position for wearables.
The Mi Watch is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 3100 4G chipset with four Cortex A7 cores. It provides one gigabyte of RAM as well as eight gigabytes of storage. The firm notes that its smartwatch supports GPS, cellular connectivity, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and NFC.
