'Runkeeper of Europe' runtastic launches Pro App

[Austria] runtastic, a mobile app for iPhones that connects sporty people among each other, just released their PRO Version (iTunes link), complimentary to their free version which has been available for some months.

Although apps for tracking personal fitness and health are relatively new, there are already some players in that space, such as Nike and more recently Runkeeper. Runkeeper’s success in the US has surely proven, that, with smartphones becoming more ubiquitious among runners or other amateur athletes, there’s a big market for these types of Apps.

runtastic now hopes to be the “Runkeeper of Europe”, whereas their PRO Version is definitely an important step in doing so. Similar to Runkeeper, runtastic also offers a web application that let’s you interact with others plus a rather addictive competition option. Users can compete with each  and it also allows you to virtually race against your friends in real time with a nifty voice-feedback feature, that let’s you know who is currently ahead – all done via GPRS tracking of course.

Although Runkeeper is by far the more prominent player in this space, runtastic has some USPs that might help them gain international traction fast. The app is not only available for iPhone according to their CTO in the upcoming weeks they are also launching their service for Android, Blackberry and Samsung’s new OS, plus it’s multilingual, whereas Runkeeper is soley available in english.

Simultanteously to the announcement of their PRO App, the company also secured a first round of funding by an unknown round of Angels and is based in Austria.