Under Armour is partnering with HTC, a Taiwanese electronics maker, on a smart fitness wristband due out this spring that will track workouts and sleep, as well as connect to social networks.
The idea is to combine HTC's tech savvy with Under Armour's expertise in fitness and training.
"It's a licensing partnership that we have with HTC," Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank said in an interview Monday at the Baltimore-based sports apparel brand's headquarters. "It will not come out until it's absolutely perfect. But that's our job, to push them and show them what we think sports should look like."
HTC's promotional material says the smart band, called the HTC Grip, will be "powered by UA Record," Under Armour's app that can aggregate users' health and fitness data from a variety of devices. Under Armour unveiled UA Record in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Waterproof with a curved display, the new Bluetooth-compatible band will be equipped with GPS to measure runners' distance and pace. It is designed to sync with smartphones and can receive call notifications and respond to messages.
It will have a suggested retail price of $199, an HTC spokeswoman said. The product was unveiled by HTC along with an updated version of its phone, the HTC One, over the weekend at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
"The thing that makes HTC [Grip] unique is that it only opens with our app," Plank said. "It's programmed specifically to work with Under Armour Record. So when you start combining these two things, we think it gives us a lot of capability to make hardware and integrate with what we think is one of the best equipment manufacturers in the world."
The collaboration represents the latest incursion by Under Armour, a performance apparel and footwear company with $3 billion in annual sales, into wearable technology designed to monitor workouts and important health indicators such as weight.
Being proactive about health holds personal appeal for Plank. In 2011, his friend and colleague Bill Hampton suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 51. In an interview in October, Plank said he couldn't shake the belief that there should have been markers to alert Hampton or his doctors to serious problems.
UA Record charts weight gains or losses and incorporates information from Armour39 — a chest strap that measures heart rate and calories burned — the Jawbone UP or other devices.
"Whether it's the Jawbone or the Apple Watch or whether it's our HTC device, it's the same simplistic place that gives you the same simplistic picture of what your health is regardless of the wearable device that you use," Plank said.
Under Armour recently acquired two mobile health and fitness applications, San Francisco-based MyFitnessPal and European app Endomondo. Both included active social networks of committed users that, coupled with Under Armour's earlier acqisition of MapMyFitness, gives it an online community of 120 million people.
The new smartband enters a marketplace that includes competition from Under Armour rival Nike.
A review on CNET.com said the HTC Grip "looks like a future-forward Nike Fuelband." The Fuelband is an activity tracker that integrates with iPhones and other devices.
HTC said its band will be compatible with Android, iOS devices and Bluetooth-enabled accessories such as heart-rate sensors.
It represents HTC's first wearable fitness device.
"Grip is our first product to offer deep integration with UA Record, providing an experience that will surpass the high standards of even professional athletes," said Drew Bamford, corporate vice president of HTC creative labs, in a prepared statement.
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