As I’m sure many of you have seen, Nike+ is built-in to the new iPhone 3GS! Very exciting stuff indeed. Nike was really onto something a few years back when they made the bet that people listening to their music while they run would also want to track their stats and engage in a broader community, making their solitary runs more social and competitive.
Nike is obviously a big, global brand. They also have an oversized marketing budget, to say the least. So, why on earth would we be happy about their arrival on the iPhone? For starters, Nike’s solution uses a sensor and accelerometer, and not GPS. This means that you need to go out and buy a separate sensor (and for best results, Nike shoes) to use the Nike system. With RunKeeper, all you need is you and your iPhone. Second, the lack of GPS also means that Nike’s solution incorporates no location data. It can track distance (sort of) by number of steps, but isn’t as accurate as GPS tracking and shows no path traveled on a map. It also assumes a set stride length, so for activities like interval training where your pace varies, it becomes inaccurate quickly. Third, with the Nike solution, it only works when you are doing activities involving taking steps, which means that it is useless for activities like cycling, skiing, skating, and others that do not involve putting one foot in front of the other. RunKeeper is much more versatile across a wide range of activities.
So, why doesn’t Nike just incorporate GPS? Well, according to Michael Tchao, the head of Nike+, “We really wanted to separate ourselves from that sort of very technical, geeky side of things. Everyone understands speed and distance.” If I may, I’m going to question his true motives on this one. Is that really why, or is it because Nike is a sneaker company that doesn’t want to untether users from Nike shoes since selling shoes is their core business? According to the Disruptive Innovation concept that was popularized by Clayton Christensen, almost all organizations that have “died” or been displaced from their industries (because of a new paradigm or customer offering) could see the disruption coming but did nothing until it was too late. I have a very hard time believing that a running shoe company (albeit an incredible one) is forward-thinking enough to build a community of users that has no need to invest in that company’s running shoes and/or technology in order to participate.
Now back to my initial contention that Nike+ coming to the iPhone is a good thing for RunKeeper. Here is this big mega-brand with deep pockets marching in and educating every iPhone owner on why they should be running with their iPhone. And, oh wait, there is little RunKeeper with a superior solution and no additional technology required, just waiting to capitalize on all of Nike’s hard work on the marketing front. Even better is that the RunKeeper solution is still so new, I can’t tell you how many improvements we have coming in the next several months. But please, I beg you, don’t tell Nike!
By the way, I am pleased to report that in the week since the new iPhone 3GS came out with Nike+ built-in, RunKeeper’s daily downloads (of both RunKeeper Free and RunKeeper Pro) have almost doubled and we have jumped from #11 to #8 in the App Store health/fitness rankings. Did I mention that we have several new features coming in the next few weeks?