Nike Out Of FuelBand Business And Into Software, Apple Partnership To Shift Wearable Focus
As we reported on last week, Nike has decided that it's had enough of producing its own wearables, resulting in a seriously short one-year lifespan for FuelBand. With the move, about 55 people were said to have been laid-off, and speculation ran rampant about what Nike would do next. Well, in a new interview with CNBC, Nike CEO Mark Parker drops some big hints.
While Nike isn't going to be making its own wearables, Parker makes it clear that nothing is changing on the software side. He name-drops Apple as being a company Nike is working with, and although he doesn't fill us in on what's in the pipeline, we can begin to put some pieces of the puzzle together.
If Nike is working close with Apple, it could be that the project being worked on is the iWatch, a product that's often talked about but never seems to get here. It could be that Nike decided to reduce the emphasis on its own hardware because the opportunity with Apple is far greater.
That being said, Parker did suggest that other companies were being worked with as well, so while Nike's biggest reach for NikeFuel might be the iWatch, or some other unannounced Apple product, it won't keep all of its eggs in just one basket.
Despite Nike's dropping of the FuelBand, Parker said that it hopes to increase NikeFuel users from 30 million to 100 million, although no date for that target was mentioned.
