In many ways, Fitbit (FIT) and Fitbit stock are in the same place that BlackBerry and Blackberry stock were a year ago, as the “bean counting” pundits and investors have left FIT for dead, even though it has great technology and tremendous potential. I believe that FIT stock will probably rally in 2018, just like BB stock jumped in 2017.
Like BlackBerry, Fitbit offers the market potentially life-saving products that will help businesses and consumers a great deal. Specifically, BlackBerry offers highly effective IT security products and operating systems that will prevent extremely valuable information from being hacked. The company’s highly secure QNX operating system can also stop hackers from taking over driverless cars, thereby endangering the lives of their passengers.
Meanwhile, Fitbit’s Ionic smartwatch, to a much greater extent than competing products, can alert people when they may have debilitating, potentially fatal illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. Unlike its competitors, the Ionic monitors blood oxygen levels and is slated to soon seamlessly monitor blood glucose levels. Of course, identifying diseases at earlier stages makes them easier to cure and reduces the chances that they will be fatal. Additionally, by encouraging exercise, Fitbit significantly reduces the likelihood that people will contract a number of the most prevalent and costly diseases, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Few if any things are more valuable to people than their lives and health.
In addition to individuals, health insurers can also benefit from Fitbit’s products. By catching diseases sooner and encouraging more exercise, the company’s products enable health insurers’ costs to drop tremendously.
Indeed, health insurers are already incentivizing their customers to utilize the company’s products, as a November 2017 report by the Minnesota Star Tribune stated. The article noted that UnitedHealth (UNH) incorporated Fitbit’s devices into its wellness program at the beginning of this year, while two smaller insurers, HealthPartners and Medica, have similar programs Moreover, the article quotes benefits consulting firm Mercer as saying that 31% of large employers “were utilizing technology-based resources such as wearables and apps to encourage activity,” up from 24% in 2015. And Fitbit “contracts with 1,300 companies, health insurers and corporate wellness vendors to get hundreds of thousands of Fitbits onto the wrists of employees across the country,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported in February 2017.
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