Apple has reportedly laid off a small number of employees from its Fitness+ team, raising new questions about the future direction of the subscription workout service.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple cut a “handful” of Fitness+ employees last week, including people working on the service’s audio content. The affected work includes Time to Walk and Time to Run, two Fitness+ experiences that let Apple Watch users follow guided sessions without watching a workout video.
The cuts do not mean Apple is immediately ending those features. However, Bloomberg reports that Apple is expected to reduce the frequency of new audio releases following the staff reductions. The changes suggest that Apple is looking more closely at the cost and structure of Fitness+, which requires a steady stream of new content to keep the service fresh.
The latest layoffs also come as Apple continues to reevaluate Fitness+. Gurman previously reported that Apple had been examining the service’s future, with factors including the expense of producing new content and subscriber churn. The latest cuts are reportedly viewed within the Fitness+ organization as the beginning of potentially broader cost-cutting measures and structural changes over the coming months and years.
One possible direction is a closer relationship between Fitness+ and Apple’s Health app. Apple has been expanding the Health experience, including plans for video content that explains health topics and helps users understand personal health information and benchmarks. With Apple’s health and fitness efforts increasingly operating under the same broader Services organization, Fitness+ could eventually become more tightly integrated with Health. That remains a reported possibility rather than an announced Apple plan.
For now, Fitness+ remains available and Apple has not announced that it is discontinuing the service or its audio experiences. The immediate change appears to be a smaller team and less frequent new audio content, while the longer-term structure of Fitness+ remains under review.
The relatively small size of the reported layoffs is also important. The report describes the affected group as a “handful” of employees, so the cuts alone do not establish that Apple is preparing to shut down Fitness+. They do, however, provide a concrete sign that Apple is reassessing how the service is staffed and how much new content it produces.
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