Facebook plans to link Oculus workouts to Apple Health

While Facebook and Apple haven’t been on the best of terms lately, the social media giant is reportedly considering letting Oculus users sync their workout data with Apple Health, according to Bloomberg.

The news comes via snippets found in the Oculus iPhone app. The features seem pretty basic: users could integrate data like calories burned into the Health app. Oculus users could also view saved workout data in the Health app on an Oculus headset. Overall, this looks like the typical integration for your Healthcare app.

The rumor also fits in well with several rumors coming out of Facebook in recent months. Last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he envisaged “peloton-type fitness subscriptions” for virtual reality in the future. The company is also allegedly work on a connected watch, which it plans to launch in 2022. Although concrete details are scarce, the smartwatch is seen as a medium for Facebook to connect to various fitness platforms like Strava and Peloton without having to go through Google. Meanwhile, at the end of 2020, Facebook announced that it was adding Oculus Move– a type of fitness tracking software – to its Oculus Quest devices.

Home fitness had a moment in 2020. The pandemic closures have led to months of gym closures and people locked in their homes, and fitness games have benefited. Games like Nintendo Ring Switch Adventure were scarce in early 2020, while Oculus titles like Beat the saber and Supernatural have also been underlined as key examples of the category. The fitness games market is expected to grow by around 33% over the next few years, reach $ 59 billion by 2027.

Integration with the Health app would be an easy way for Facebook to attract iPhone users to its platform. The Health app is one of the easiest ways to consolidate your health and workout data in one place, and the vast majority of iOS fitness apps allow users to import or export their data to the platform. It would also potentially open the door to further integration with the Apple Watch, as you can now record Fitness Gaming workouts on the device and workouts recorded natively on the wrist also sync through the Health and Fitness apps.

That said, hidden code found in apps isn’t always a guarantee that a feature will come true. (Although sometimes it is.) This does indicate, however, that this is a feature that Facebook is at least exploring internally. Either way, it looks like Facebook is eager to spark increased interest in health and fitness, as well as the valuable data it generates. Whether that’s a good thing or not, well, this is Facebook we’re talking about.