$100 fitness trackers gather dust after novelty wears off

Deepak Jayasimha’s fitness tracker is now with his father-in-law in India, where it sits unused. Annabel Kelly foisted hers off on the kids. Virginia Atkinson took hers off to charge the battery and hasn’t picked it up since February.

Although sales of Fitbit and other fitness trackers are strong, many of their owners lose enthusiasm for them once the novelty of knowing how many steps they’ve taken wears off.

One research firm, Endeavour Partners, estimates that about a third of these trackers get abandoned after six months. A health care investment fund, Rock Health, says Fitbit’s regulatory filings suggest that only half of Fitbit’s nearly 20 million registered users were still active as of the first quarter of 2015.

Abandonment affects all manufacturers of fitness trackers, which are relatively cheap at about $100 and are commonly given as gifts. Fitbit gets the spotlight because it started trading publicly last month and has 76 percent of the U.S. market share by revenue, up from 64 percent a year earlier, according to the NPD Group.

Fitbit now has competition from Apple Watch and other smartwatches that do what fitness trackers do and more, such as showing news updates and boarding passes for flights.

If people aren’t using their trackers, they won’t recommend them to friends and family or upgrade when a new model comes out, said Dan Ledger, an analyst at Endeavour Partners. They also won’t pay for premium subscription packages, a potential growth area for Fitbit.