A
A
A
Technology company Garmin has recently added pregnancy tracking to its various smartwatches and to its Connect app. This new addition will allow users to keep an eye on symptoms that tend to indicate whether someone may be pregnant or not, including fatigue and monitor progress in relation to a person’s due date.
The feature will also let users pause updates when it comes to their training status, which will usually take metrics around a person’s level of exercises to show what their fitness level is at the time.
Read More »
Users will also be able to adjust their heart rate alerts because of how heart rate will increase during pregnancy. Users will also be able to change goals when it comes to hydration. In addition, there will also be another app that allows users to monitor contractions while a person is in labor.
Finally, the app allows those who are pregnant to easily log daily symptoms and even track pregnancy contractions from their wrist.
In the past, pregnant users have been critical of many of the smartwatch and wearable products because they do not incorporate some kind of pregnancy feature on their respective devices.
One huge competitor in the space, Apple Watches, users were not particularly given any special advice even if they were told to limit their amount of exercise. Users complained they were unable to tell the app what was most healthy for them and therefore it became less useful to them under these circumstances. This also caused anxiety amongst those who were pregnant because it served as a constant reminder of how much they were supposed to exercise as if they were not pregnant.
Another competitor Fitbit has also long been hesitant to include a pregnancy setting, and actually has suggestions on its message boards dating all the way back to 2013. Now, Apple and Fitbit are both letting users track their menstrual cycles though they do not deal with pregnancies yet. Pregnancies would change the data in this feature.
Withings is another competitor that does actually have a pregnancy tracker and it lets users monitor weight gain while they are pregnant with a smart scale. Withings representatives have maintained in the past the importance of helping people do what is natural while pregnant.
What is very useful about the new pregnancy feature Garmin is that its users can simply continue to use their smartwatch while they are pregnant. Garmin’s vice president of global consumer marketing recently asserted, “It’s our hope that this pregnancy tracking feature helps women make sense of how their pregnancy ties into their active lifestyles and overall well-being.”
With all of these features in place, it appears Garmin is well positioned as the leading player for those who are pregnant. It would be no surprise if the competitors started implementing similar features in the coming months, especially if Garmin finds success with those who are pregnant.
