lures developers to its Fit platform with contest, free swag

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Published 19 Nov 2014

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Disclosure

Fit looks great, but it launched with rather paltry developer support. The current kings of the fitness-tracking wearable world like Fitbit wbone don’t share the data with Fit, instead sticking to their own apps for tracking your health stats.

That’s bad news for , which wants its Fit app to be the all-in-one hub on Android for fitness health data. To try to remedy this is running a contest, offering wearable swag prime placement in the ay Store for new or updated apps that incorporate the Fit A. Interested devs should fill out the interest form submit their final product by Feb. 17.

The top six new updated apps get the featured ay Store treatment several prizes, including an Android ar watch, Adidas, lar wearables, a things smart scale. is hoping to get a ton of entries, as it’s offering prize batches in tiers to 150 new updated app entries.

The story behind the story: ile this contest may appeal to some independent developers to create clever apps, it’s unlikely to make the bigger companies budge. They have a successful market going don’t want to jeopardize customers continuing to buy their own wearable gear. And they’re certainly not going to be swayed by a few hundred bucks worth of free gear. is going to need to do more than throw a contest if it wants to get the likes of Fitbit wbone to open up their ecosystems connect with Fit.