It was announced yesterday that Adidas has acquired Austrian mobile fitness company Runtastic. The acquisition is valued at approximately $240 million and the company will be run as a separate entity within the sportswear giant (at least for the time being); that is great news for the app’s dedicated user base, which consists of 70 million registered users. Founded in 2009, Runtastic doesn’t always get the most attention, competing against apps from Nike and Runkeeper, but the company has been steadily increasing its stable of products over the past 6 years. The startup currently has 18 mobile apps in active development across multiple platforms. Having expanded beyond the namesake running app, Runtastic’s apps cover everything from building up your abs to helping you eat better. Runtastic has also gotten into the wearable space, recently launching Orbit, their daily fitness / sleep tracker.
Adidas currently offers their own activity tracking software, miCoach, and hardware, including smartwatches and connected soccer balls. It will be interesting to see how Adidas plans to integrate Runtastic into their already developed wearable ecosystem. $240 million is a lot to pay for overlapping products just to keep them separate; Adidas clearly has plans for Runtastic that it is not ready to share. It will be interesting to see how the company leverages the new talent and IPs. With the miCoach team and the Runtastic team there are clear redundancies and it is only a matter of time until Adidas has to make it clear what their path forward is.
