Financing opportunities for the trend of sports APP?

With the rise of jogging craze, all sorts of sports APPs start up their “new sports mode”, and exercise results can be seen anywhere in the Circle of Friends. We could see hundreds of mobile software of sports. The user number of APP “Codoon” and “Joyrun” even reached one million. It is estimated by insiders that sports APPs will keep developing with a rapid growth in the future years. At the same time, sports APP also kicked off a breeze of financial craze. Though last year 12 products among them acquire venture capital, there is no clear profit model yet.

Current situation: hundreds of sports APPs, difficulty in choice

When we search the “sport” category of mobile software platform, hundreds of appear suddenly on the mobile. It should be noticed that the download time of several APPs even reached one million.

 “At present, the registered users of Codoon is 24 million with 2 million active users.” Said by Mr. Liang, Senior Director of Operations of Codoon. The APP-Codoon was launched in 2012. According to statistics of Codoon, the main sports manners of users in Codoon are jogging and riding, while jogging is the favorite way. The function frequently used is monitoring over motion trail. In addition, users also behave actively by using sports social communication function.

Sports APPs with social communication function are widely accepted by sports fans. Birdboy is a sports APP with social function, which could tell the location and promote movement. Moreover, it is like a “woman matchmaker” because it could help people find sports fan with similar interests. IHS predicts that the download time of such kind of software will rise to 248 million in 2017 from the previous 156 million in 2012, while sports APP field might be another commercial Red Sea.

Be that as it may, we still have questions about those sports APPs.

Question 1: What’s the profit mode for sports APP which favored by major capital?

The market of sports APP attracted attention from capital market. In 2014, about 12 sports APP acquired venture capital. In March 2014, Codoon got 60 million yuan fund from SZVCA. Only seven months later, it again acquired 30 million dollars financing fund offered by SIG and SBCVC.

Even though multiwheel capital are acquired, Codoon is still not profitable. “Codoon is still in the stage of entrepreneurship, and a vague profit mode is formed in progress.”Mr. Liang said.

 “The industry of sports APP is over overheated, and the product competition is fierce.” Analyzed by Liang Zhenpeng, a senior CE industry analyst. The capacity of sports APP is limited with vague development direction. There’s still no clear profit mode, many companies develop sports APP in the same idea of internet companies. The only profit way relies on product placement. However, the risk of injuring experience of user might occur after the advertisement is placed.

Question 2: Will O2O be the trend after “sports social contact” become key words? 　 

Although the profit mode is still in exploration, the booming sports social communication still brought us huge market imagination. After Codoon acquired 30 million financing fund, Codoon started to focus on this field. As Mr. Liang said, “Single sports might make people feel alone, but sports social communication activated users’ engagement.” Sports APP with social communication function win users through diversified competition. “Birdboy is a product with social communication function, which is partial to athletic sports and local social communication.” Jiang Zhiwei, the founder of Birdboy gave an explanation to his product.