While this seems tempting with its large customer base, I think it’s over priced. I don’t see people flocking back to the gyms like pre-pandemic times. This is where Peloton is trying to produce growth. I think people have become accustomed to workouts at home. Right now Peleton is still losing money.
My .02$
To me it just seems far outside of Apple’s core business, plus it’s a tiny drop in the bucket for Apple.
Say, Apple could grow Peloton to rival Garmin (huge stretch, right?), Garmin only brings in $5B. Apple currently brings in $385B. Why would Apple buy money losing Peloton and then try and grow it to add a few billion to the bottom line?
I also don’t think Apple would want to service cumbersome stationary bicycles and treadmills.
The Peloton brand is certainly recognizable but so would Apple Fitness with augmented reality virtual yoga / aerobics classes. Apple could just do a bring your own bike virtual spin class some day.
I could see Apple laptops and TVs being compatible with the bike. I always saw the proprietary Peloton screen as being the weak link. If you have problems with that, the whole thing is practically useless.
My guess would be Apple would use Peloton’s established footprint to build some kind of Apple virtual fitness program that would extend well beyond bikes. They’d be buying the user base, not the hardware.
Apple already has this:
Article focuses on the consumer base as value-add for Apple, but doesn’t Peloton hold patents that cover virtual live classes? Also, Apple bought Beats for brand value, and Peloton has a similarly strong brand. Or maybe they want the exec team to lead their Fitness+ product. Or maybe it’s a nothing burger.
Their content/classes. Easier to buy something already developed than doing it in house.
But they are already developing it in house, and probably doing a better job
"We prefer the look and feel of Apple Fitness+. The sets it uses are more polished, whereas Peloton feels surprisingly low budget in comparison.
Many of the Peloton workouts are led by a single trainer, while on Fitness+ tends to involve three different trainers, one leading the session, and one of the others demonstrating modifications (this is immensely helpful when moves are difficult). "emphasized text
Yes, but I saw an ad for an Apple credit card the other day … that definitely seems outsde of Apple’s core business. I won’t post the link since it’s not cycling-related but it’s easy enough to find.
Goldman Sachs is getting out. You will likely see Citi or some other CC player get in on it.
The consumer product graveyard is filled with products that were “better” than the leading brand and still failed.
Peloton has what Fitness+ has been unable to create……a massive user base.
This is the same reason why competitors to Zwift (and Twitter) continue to fail - they can’t get enough users to switch in order to make their platforms meaningful.
Absolutely, but just to be clear my post was addressing the comment that Apple would buy Peleton as it was easier to buy something than do it in house, if Apple was to by Peleton for it’s production, they would would have a worse product, and just be paying different employees
@Account_Deleted Also consider that Peloton runs on an Android platform.
I was wondering about this too. Huge hardware headache, plus you’d almost have to integrate with Android. OTOH, it could be a nice push to steal watch buyers from Garmin, and I think Apple see watches and fitness as a way to pull people into their ecosystem.
Apple has apps on Android today, most notably Apple Music. If there’s a big enough subscription revenue opportunity they’ve at least shown in the past they’ll dabble in cross platform.
Them having to take ownership of the Peloton display that runs ASOP (open source version of Android) is a different story though. Surely they’d want to kill that as soon as they could if they took over,
I’ve seen a number of places predict Apple could come and buy Peloton over the years. The skeptical part of me thinks the authors/sites are either:
- Just taking a swing at a prediction. If it comes true, they will hang their hat on how they predicted it. If it doesn’t, it will just be forgotten about
- They are trying to inflate the stock price. They may have bought a number of shares and if they can convince enough people that this might happen and they should jump on the stock while it’s still cheap (thus raising the price), they can make a profit