Rise in Digital Fitness during COVID-19
Digital Fitness Market Is Growing and Expected To Grow 3 Times More In 2027
Digital fitness applications have seen a drastic rise in users during the coronavirus pandemic. Across the world, billions of people have been directly influenced due to the COVID-19 infection pandemic, which resulted in the closure of all public places, including gyms.
The general population, having the facility of fast and accurate digital fitness access, utilized this opportunity to have a healthy lifestyle by accessing health and fitness applications along with buying digital fitness trackers to keep a record of their workouts.
Strava, one of the top digital fitness apps, now has a record number of more than 73 million users worldwide. Every month, an average number of two million users have registered for the application for the first time since it has been made public.
The digital fitness application uses the facility of built-in smartphone GPS (global positioning system) to track outdoor workouts, along with allowing its users to compare their daily performances with other users across the world.
During the initial lockdown period between March and June, the fitness app Freeletics, which now has more than 90,000 users in the United Kingdom, observed an increase of 50% in its usage.
Pleasant reassurance with digital fitness
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided millions of people with the unique opportunity to opt for a healthy lifestyle by adding exercise to their daily routine, as people have less reason not to. Nevertheless, outdoor exercise provides people with a welcoming relief from the stress caused by spending most of the day inside the homes during the nationwide lockdowns.
Although due to the restrictive measures implemented by the government to limit and prevent further transmission of the infection into the community, numerous people have now turned towards online exercising communities and digital fitness applications, which allow the users to enhance their connection with other same minded individuals throughout the world who enjoy workouts and exercises.
Strava observed an increase in the total amount of fitness activity being logged on the freely available digital fitness app, with the most popular choice of workout being cycling and running. Those individuals who have installed the application even before the start of the coronavirus pandemic also increased their quantity and regularity of workouts by 13%.
A record number of individuals globally were able to complete the monthly running challenge of May for 5 kilometers. Despite the cancellation of major organized marathons in different parts of the world, 44% of Strava users were able to complete their solo marathons while being in lockdown.
The app developers were also able to observe a major spike in the formation of several online activity clubs that allows several members to join and compete with each other around the world. The tens of millions of users also shared around 400 million workout photos on the application to provide aspiration to other users.
Digital fitness global market
During the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a spike in the digital fitness market size, as numerous people across the world bought digital fitness watches and bands to record their daily exercise input to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
The global digital fitness market size was around USD 30.41 billion in the year 2019 and is expected to grow further to about USD 91.98 billion in the year 2027, as people are now more concerned about their body’s health and wellness.
Currently, it has been observed across the world that people are growing awareness that is related towards the physical and mental health of their being, which is expected to drive people towards adopting different digital fitness monitoring devices according to their usage, which would consequently increase its worth in the global market.
Some of the most used digital fitness watches are by top tech brands, including the Apple watch series, Samsung active watch series, and Fitbit trackers. Other than that, digital fitness bands in the budget range are by Redmi, Samsung, Fitbit, and Amazefit that allows the users to track all basic fitness requirements, including continuous heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, blood oxygen saturation level, body temperature, step count, calories burned, alarm, stress meter and activity time though out the day.
The digital fitness trackers are connected via Bluetooth to their respective developer application in a smartphone to provide a complete and thorough record and average ratios at the end of the week.