PTON in 2 Years

Recently, I bought my wife an apple watch. Any new apple watch comes with 3 months of apple fitness+ for free. It hasn’t launched in my country yet - but the promo will be honored as soon as it launches.

This got me to do some more research on apple fitness+. My takeaway is that it would be a serious competitor to PTON. Here are a few reasons why:

  1. Fitness+ offers the same work outs as does PTON: Bike, Tread for the connected members, and strength, yoga etc. for the digital members.

  2. For Fitness+ subs who want to do a workout on the Bike or the Tread, as long as you have an apple watch, you can use any bike or tread. Why then, would you want to dish out $2.5K for a Peloton bike and go through the shipping delays?

  3. Bundling of fitness+ with the apple one service would make it easier for Apple to grow its sub base.

My hypothesis that apple fitness+ will have meaningful impact on PTON’s future growth. The question then is - how much impact would it have ? I have no idea, but I’ll be carefully watching PTON’s results in the next 2-4 quarters.

I believe, eventually, whether that happens in 1 year or 5, PTON would offer a connected membership that would work with any hardware, not just with PTON’s own. In that respect, I expect the 2 competing serves, Fitness+ and PTON, would converge.

I truly believe that the future of fitness is connected. I have been using PTON’s digital membership (without the bike) since the pandemic began and I love it. PTON is a strong presence in the connected fitness space, but I have serious doubts about it’s medium to long term growth.

Long PTON (for now, but questioning my position)

9 Likes

Peloton is doing something amazing for fitness: making people like it!

Not a small thing given how many expensive pieces of exercise equipment sit unused and dusty in garages and attics around the world.

Reminds me of a joke from Big Bang Theory. Raj has an iPod. Sheldon says to the effect, you’ll be sorry when Microsoft comes out w their version.

Of course heard the same thing about Zoom for a year. It did happen to Slack and Netscape, but quite rare. So Apple Watch users, in the millions will either abandon Peloton or decide the watch is all I need and all that Peloton offers is a gimmick and a joke in 2 years?

Respectfully, Tinker

3 Likes

This got me to do some more research on apple fitness+. My takeaway is that it would be a serious competitor to PTON. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Fitness+ offers the same work outs as does PTON: Bike, Tread for the connected members, and strength, yoga etc. for the digital members.

2. For Fitness+ subs who want to do a workout on the Bike or the Tread, as long as you have an apple watch, you can use any bike or tread. Why then, would you want to dish out $2.5K for a Peloton bike and go through the shipping delays?

3. Bundling of fitness+ with the apple one service would make it easier for Apple to grow its sub base.

They might be the same workouts from the outside but I’m sure the instructors are different. Also your friends are all competing on a PTON. What will you do by yourself on Fitness+? (I don’t necessarily mean you but in general this is group think) Maybe it might make sense for people who don’t like the competition. It’s like the reverse iPhone analogy. Everyone wants iMessage so we can create a group text outside of whatapps or another group chat.

PTON has a huge start in-terms of the content they have. The instructors and celebrities they are signing up is driving more users their way.

1 Like

Hi sunnym,
I noticed your great reply was all italics and I wondered if this was on purpose or you fudged the closing tag with the wrong slanted slash.

It turns out you did get the closing tag wrong but for a different reason:

The slash was correctly forward-slanting but . . . it was placed after the “i” and should be before.

Kind regards,
MoneySlob

Your italics continued after the closing italic tag.

3. Bundling of fitness+ with the apple one service would make it easier for Apple to grow its sub base.

Yes, thank you for catching that! It’s too bad I can’t go back and edit my message so it’s easier to understand.

It turns out you did get the closing tag wrong but for a different reason:

Strikes me as rather odd that you need to know basic HTML programming in order to properly post on these boards.

2 Likes

Also your friends are all competing on a PTON. What will you do by yourself on Fitness+?

Completely agree.

People who think Apple can easily win here only have a superficial understanding of how Peloton works. The community and competition is a vital part. If you don’t have a Peloton bike you can’t get on the leader boards. Some boards have famous athletes holding the top slots. It’s a universe unto itself.

And yes, the content and instructors also matter. Peloton has a much larger audience making it more attractive for the best instructors who are able to monetize their followings on Instagram and on social media. No one right now can offer that, no even Apple. The top instructors on Peloton had 500,000+ Instagram followers. That’s insane. It will take Apple a long time to be able to offer an instructor the same audience size. If they ever can.

Fitness+ is great for a casual user that wants this an option but doesn’t work out regularly.

I think the market can support both Peloton and Apple Fitness+. The TAM is so big, like e-commerce, that there is room for a few large players.

8 Likes

Everyone realizes Apple Fitness+ hasn’t even officially launched yet, right? ( https://www.apple.com/apple-fitness-plus/?afid=p238%7CsTLJsx… )

So apparently, my immediate choices as a consumer are:

  1. know Peloton has a super popular workout program and wait for the bike, or

  2. invest in a bike now hoping I like what Apple Fitness+ has to offer.

There are several legitimate reasons to question Peloton as an investment. In my opinion Apple Fitness+ seems pretty far down the list.

11 Likes