Sports clothier Under Armour acquires two mobile apps for $560 mn

Under Armour Inc, provider of sports clothing and accessories, has acquired two mobile apps for about $560 million, marking a growing presence in the trendy "connected fitness" and wearable devices sphere, Reuters reported.

According to the company, it would pay $475 million for MyFitnessPal, a free app for tracking food habits and caloric intake, and additional $85 million for Endomondo, a Danish firm which describes itself as "the personal trainer in your pocket."

Yesterday, Under Armour reported a better-than-expected 37-per cent increase in quarterly profit. The company has seen sales growth from integration of tracking services with sportswear.

The company bought MapMyFitness, an app that virtually tracked fitness workouts, in 2013.

MyFitnessPal, which claims to have over 80 million registered users, had developed one of the largest nutrition and calorie databases. That data was an attractive prospect for Under Armour, which was increasingly looking to use insights about consumers' health and fitness to sell more apparel.

Under Armour, said in a statement, that it was trying to create the world's largest digital health and fitness community.

The company might soon compete with Apple Inc and Google Inc as the two technology companies too were building their own software and services for the health and fitness-conscious.

The official iOS apps of MyFitnessPal and Endomondo were available on the App Store for free, appadvice.com reported.

The acquisition would not affect the operations at the two acquired companies which would continue to operate from their headquarters in San Francisco, California, and Copenhagen, Denmark, respectively.

With the move, Under Armour would expand its Connected Fitness community to more than 120 million registered users, including 80 million from MyFitnessPal and 20 million from Endomondo. This would see Under Armour's network emerge as the world's largest digital health and fitness community.

According to commentators, the acquisition which cost Under Armour over half a billion dollars, further underlined how big the business of health and fitness tracking had become.

Meanwhile, Apple is set to launch Apple Watch in April, whose key features include health and fitness apps for tracking activity and workouts.