NIke have killed their Fuelband project. They were mentioned in our discussion on wearables as a leading player. What does this mean? Did they kill it because the whole project lost money? For some other reason? Does this affect wearables generally?
Nope. Made huge amounts of money. Gobs of it. Nike just didn’t like the name. Didn’t rhyme with “swoosh” well enough.
Typical corporation, right? Always ignoring profits in favor of rhyme-y-ness.
If I had a list named “people I want to advise me on my business model” your name was already at the bottom of it. Now I think it’s off the bottom and on to a whole new list.
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I don’t think it does. Nike was never particularly good at the hardware side of things. Given their association with Apple (as the articles notes, Tim Cook is a member of Nike’s board) and the increased competition in the hardware space generally speaking, it makes sense for them to focus on their core competencies and stop making a device that didn’t deliver a great experience anyway. In the end, Nike want to sell more athletic gear, and they can accomplish that without the hardware piece. I’d guess you’ll see FuelBand App support hardware from other manufacturers at some point.
–jeremy
I doubt this will impact wearables. I think it was just a badly executed product, particularly if it only synced with Apple; which, while a huge userbase, it is cutting the potential market quite short by ignore the second critical OS, Ubuntu for smart-phones.
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Swoosh
(… is less than 20 characters long…)
I think we need some sort of protocol for this, if we’re not going to disable this “feature”.
[insert obligatory filler text here]
[i love badvoltage]
[bryansbusinessacumenisunimpeachableexceptaboutsneakers]
[aqlovesdesktops]
[by the beard of jono] [cue hanna barbera sound effect]
Agreed. Think I’m going to start including random youtube videos whenever I need some extra characters.
I was thinking Bane quotes.
“Your precious armory, gratefully accepted. We will need it.”