Open-source mapping platform Mapbox has acquired activity tracking app Fitness AR, which allows users to view runs, hikes or cycling routes from Strava superimposed on a 3D map of the terrain. The announcement was made by Mapbox mobile VP Paul Veugen in a Medium post.
Mapbox will continue to deliver updates to the app, which will be dropping its $2.99 price and going free in the App Store starting today.
Fitness AR was among the first ARKit-enabled apps and was featured by Apple early on. The app utilized Mapbox’s Unity Maps SDK to visualize the terrain of the paths. Like most other ARKit-enabled apps, what the team built was definitely relatively simple, but it seems people at Mapbox really liked the implementation.
Fitness AR’s co-founders Adam Debreczeni and Eric Florenzano will be joining Mapbox as part of the acquisition to work on AR tech in verticals, including “travel, weather, fitness, sports and gaming,” according to the company.
“This is about building interactive experiences. AR is going to be bigger than the browser and bigger than mobile,” said Mapbox CEO Eric Gundersen in a statement. “The addition of Adam and Eric accelerates our play of building a world class team of designers and developers rooted in the future of AR. Not only is this critical to games and mobile apps, but also will enhance our AR guided navigation and enterprise data visualizations.”
Mapbox, which is increasingly shifting efforts to augmented reality, has been making quite a few moves in the space recently. Earlier this month, the 7-year-old company, which has raised more than $227 million, acquired startup Mapdata to help it expand further into building augmented reality maps.
