Did your vibrating fitness bracelet wake you up on time? Good, because Jawbone has not one, but two pieces of news to share this morning. First off, getting the corporate news out of the way, the company's buying BodyMedia, perhaps best known for its wearable fitness trackers (yep, similar to what Jawbone's already making). In fact, though, BodyMedia's been in the health-data business since 1999, with a particularly strong foothold in the medical industry -- a market Jawbone hasn't reached yet, but would like to. As you can imagine, once the deal is finalized and Jawbone brings on BodyMedia's 60-odd employees, the plan will be to improve Jawbone's existing apps, and maybe even break into healthcare. In the meantime, we're told Jawbone will continue to sell BodyMedia's fitness monitors, but it's making no promises to keep them around indefinitely.
Speaking of improving the current Jawbone apps, the company is also opening up its API to developers so that they can use Jawbone stats in their applications, as well as share their own data back with Jawbone. For now, the Up platform is open only for iOS, though a company rep told us an Android version is in the works too. (No exact ETA there, sorry.) At launch, there will be 10 apps on board, including notables like RunKeeper, Withings and MapMyFitness. What's neat is that users can manually disable a connection with these apps anytime they want, and when they do, these third-party developers are required to delete user data from their servers. Again, no word on when this will be available for Android, but for now, at least, the iOS platform is open to developers worldwide. Hit the break for more info, along with a full list of the apps you can sync with your Up band right away.
Filed under: Wearables
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