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Comment by 013a | Hacker News Reader

But, there's an argument to be made that they would be cross-shopping $500 Amazon-Prime-deliver-tomorrow bikes, to pair with the Apple ecosystem they already have.

I would be scared if I ran Peloton. Their entire MO is the ecosystem; you buy the bike, with the integrated tablet, and use their fitness program. Outside of the top 1% who could drop three grand on the Peloton system without blinking, Apple's whole "$500 dirt cheap bike + $300 brand new iPad (that you may already have) + $30/month Apple One Premier" system (that you may already subscribe to) is killer.

Yeah, you can BYOB to Peloton, but Fitness+ (especially as a part of Apple One now) is dirt cheap. At that point, Peloton (and competing products) basically just has to hope that the workout quality in Fitness+ sucks, which isn't likely (this is Apple we're talking about, they rarely half-ass things).

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Peloton is the ecosystem, I agree. It's the bike and everything around it. I obviously don't know Peloton's financials, but I see its marketing as being trainer+services primarily and BYOD treated as a second-class citizen. When people think Peloton, (I assume) they think about the integrated trainers and the classes structured around them, not _just_ the app for subscription fitness classes. At least that's my view of Peloton and what I'm basing my comment on.

$500 stationary bikes are crap. Apple Fitness is only slightly cheaper than Peloton standalone - $10 vs $13 - so I don't think that would be a factor for many people.

The main drive of Peloton if you aren't buying their bike is the instructors and high quality classes - I struggle to imagine many people would care more about watch integration than class quality, and I don't think Apple will be able to win out on the latter anytime soon.

Apple has two hundred billion dollars in cash sitting in a bank account, a fitness ecosystem, and deep experience in fitness and video production. They've announced that the initial set of programs will include cycling, treadmill walk & run, yoga, core, strength, rowing, HIIT, and cooldown. They're planning to add new workouts every week, and have popular, properly licensed music (Peloton spent years illegally playing music, before switching to no-copyright music for a year. Today its in a better place).

I would not bet money on Apple losing on class quality, let alone variety.

You are forgetting families. Peloton is $12 a month, but the workouts are tied to one account - so your wife's workout gets synced to your apple watch.

Also Apple is offering yearly pricing that works out to $6.67/mo...and then there is the bundle which if you are in the ecosystem already essentially makes it a free service...

> and then there is the bundle which if you are in the ecosystem already essentially makes it a free service...

This is key. How many people would subscribe to Prime TV if they didn’t already have a Prime membership. My guess is not many. Luckily for Netflix people consume enough that it’s not really a killer. But with fitness you probably only need a single provider. That said, I’ve lost confidence in apple’s ability to execute, but this seems like a race they could easily dominate if done right.

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