At the beginning of December, WeightWatchers.com announced the release of an application for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and PDA mobile phones. It is the first to synchronize with a web-based account via the Internet. Mobile-phone diet applications are becoming increasingly popular. Weight Watchers diet promoters link the phone application to the Web personal account, which provides a useful portable tool for diet assistance.

This makes the diet easier to follow by offering :

• The possibility of following your weight watch more closely, and of keeping permanent track of your eating


• A points calculator and tracker. The WeightWatchers diet is based on calculating the points of foods according to a specific formula. This facility provides a ready, helpful tool. It also tracks the points allowance, daily or weekly, helping you to stay within limits


• The application includes a vast database such as 25,000 food choices, restaurants and groceries


• An application which updates your web account every time you enter data or calculate.

The application has already gained huge popularity. Over 400,000 buyers have downloaded the application from a popular Web site selling cell-phone applications.

As the popularity of low-carb diets has lost ground throughout 2004 and sales have dropped, the company behind the Atkins Diet is planning to launch a similar product for mobile phones and handheld computers on the market.

The product, available at the beginning of 2005, will be so affordable that it will be within the reach of any dieter. The application is a carbohydrate counter to help dieters track the carbohydrate contents of foods, as well as their own daily carb intake.

The application is a further step within the firm's marketing policy of finding new market segments for the product -- the Atkins diet -- by diversifying the means of popularizing it. In this way it also diversifies the target audience. An Atkins diet DVD was put on the market and sold during the 2004-2005 holiday season.