Amazon launches wearable health & fitness tracker

This week saw Amazon make a jump into the wearable market, launching their new health and fitness tracker Halo and its subscription service.

The key points:

• A wristband with no screen, that will track the standard metrics such as heart rate, sleep and motion

• Features include tracking body fat percentages (Body), sleep temperature and emotional state (Tone)

• Amazon Halo Labs (the Halo's subscription service) costs $3.99 a month and will feature challenges for users based on their tracking

• Halo can only be purchased in the US at the moment, with early users picking it up for $64.99

A nervousness around privacy...

There has been much talk about the launch, with specific focus given to two of the Halo's main features - Body and Tone and the level of privacy:

• Body asks the user to take pictures of themselves, that are analysed (3D rendering) in the cloud to uncover metrics such as body fat percentage, before being deleted and stored locally

• Tone monitors your voice to track your mood (via two microphones) and Amazon has said recordings are never uploaded to the cloud and are analysed on the user's device and then deleted

Whoop, a leading player in this space, had a few things to say about Amazon's announcement:

• Amazon met with Whoop and then copied their design

• Amazon will intentionally record everything you say

• Whoop won't invade your privacy

The takeout...

Amazon can't afford to miss out on the billon-dollar health industry, so being connected to its audience 24/7 makes sense. Questions will remain around its use of data, but with Apple set to release their updated Apple Watch in a few weeks, it is very clear to see that the wearable health and fitness race is just getting started.