Why Is Apple Running Commercials for Fitness Apps?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 14, 6:32AM EDT

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One of the rumors about the new Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 6 is that it will be the ultimate fitness tool. The smartphone allegedly will do everything from measure distance run via GPS to send physicians detailed data about heartbeat, body fat and oxygen intake. The rumors should get a bit of a boost from a series of TV ads about the fitness apps run on the iPhone 5s. Apple is already selling itself as the core of America’s effort to get healthier.

The commercials are nearly ubiquitous and appear to be one of the primary marketing methods for the iPhone 5s. They depict a series of people going through exercise routines. Each person focuses on his or her fitness goals in swimming pools, on jockey routes, in weight rooms. Another part of the ad focuses on how a user can measure his or her weight. All of this is done to the “Chicken Fat” song from the 1960s. However, the song is not the primary feature of the advertisement. The ability of Americans to get fit is.

Undoubtedly apps will be one of the first benefits Apple will lean on when it launches the iPhone 6, no matter how revolutionary the hardware is. Apps continue to be the way that Apple tethers its customers to the iPhone. The millions of apps in the Apple App Store offer such a wide array of features and functions that every Apple iPhone customer will find something useful there. At the heart of the app store are game and information apps. Most enhance the iPhone’s hardware features. However, Apple has not advertised any specific group of them as a major reason to own an iPhone.

Apple may need something beyond the next best hardware to push the iPhone 6’s sales into the tens of millions per quarter. Fitness may be front and center among the reasons. Apple appears to be telegraphing that with the new fitness TV commercials about the iPhone 5s — a way to get a jump on a reason for ownership of the iPhone that will come out later this year.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.