Apple Fitness+ survey | a sign of planning or the sign of a failing service?

 

All good companies wishing to better tailor their products and services to their target customers will undertake market research. Apple is no exception.

Having said that, I rarely receive surveys and, to me, that is surprising given the amount of training I complete and the sheer volume of apps and services I use to varying degrees. Similarly, my friends and family have used Apple fitness products for many years and none of us has ever previously been asked to complete a survey for the company.

I recently received and completed an excellent and comprehensive online survey request from Apple that specifically interrogated me on every detail of how I used and liked the Fitness+ service. Generally, I would say the service is great and well-made however I would improve it in these areas

• The variety of workouts for my level is insufficient
• Workouts are often too short
• The lack of integration with other fitness hardware is embarrassing eg treadmills and stationary bikes.
• The cost will be reasonable for many people but with the previous 3 omissions, it’s too expensive to present value for my usage.

There are other issues such as the difficulty of filtering and sorting the right workout types but they are minor and easily solved.

What can we infer from the survey?

It’s always great to say something controversial like “The survey shows the desperation of Apple and the Fitness+ service is failing, it’s obvious that not enough people are continuing with their initially free subscription,” when the reality could simply be that Apple Fitness+ is doing great and wants to continue to improve and tailor its services. The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in between.

My partner is a very regular user of online coaching/fitness classes of many types. My partner has suffered over the years with me foisting vast amounts of new tech on them to try and use to improve their fitness experience. I have to be completely honest and say that virtually all the fitness products they used were not acceptable EXCEPT for Polar and Apple Watch. My partner’s summary of YEARS of enforced labour using my health tech is that Apple has the best piece of hardware and Polar FLOW is the best app.

My partner should have been the ideal candidate for Fitness+ but the reality was that I used it much more. I suspect our experiences mirror those of many in the population who started the Fitness+ subscription as a freebie and eventually thought…’Nah, it’s not worth it’

We will never see Apple’s internal finances but my gut feeling would be that Fitness+ is not performing as financially well as Apple expected.

Either way, Apple will double-down and invest in this service and it will get better. Maybe it will get better more quickly if it’s not doing so well right now? I hope it does and then I will use it again in the Winter.

Survey Questions

Here are some of the more detailed questions that were asked. The questions did cover every aspect of the service ranging from music to instructors, to tech, to workout variety, and much more.