(Peter Parkes/flickr)
There were a few proclamations earlier this week that wearable technology is dead in light of the news that Nike appears to be shutting down its Fuelband efforts, at least on the hardware side. The company denies it’s doing so, but it’s hard to see much of a future for the exercising-tracking wristband following the axing of most of the staff associated with it.
Yahoo Finance, for one, says the move kills the wearable revolution “before it even begins,” with writer Jeff Macke listing reasons for why fitness bands are just overblown hype. Chief among them: Nobody actually wants to go through the hassle of tracking their activity.
As luck would have it, I’ve just finished testing a range of fitness bands, including the FuelBand, for a piece I’m writing. While I can agree with some of the sentiment behind such proclamations, it’s definitely off-base to declare wearables DOA because of Nike’s woes.
I certainly have no love for smartwatches, which are a bad idea that’s difficult to execute for several reasons – as in, nobody wants to charge their watch every day, while companies such as Samsung don’t and may never cut it as fashion brands. Fitness bands, however, are one sub-category of wearables that have actually been seeing success.
READ: 5 reasons smartwatches will be forgotten: Peter Nowak
According to Canalysis, the U.S. market for them alone is expected to grow to 45 million units shipped by 2017, from 17 million this year. The reasons are simple: The devices are generally straightforward, do a few things well and are inexpensive. Smartwatches are the opposite of all of those.
The potential of a market can often be measured by the number of viable competitors operating within it. In that vein, fitness bands are a hot property, with close to 10 viable competitors in the running, including Nike, Fitbit, Jawbone, Samsung and even Sony. As Mashable notes, Nike won’t be the only one who drops out of that tight race – more losers are inevitable.
The fact that Nike looks to be bowing out is hardly a surprise, since the FuelBand has been a considerable laggard for some time. Of the five bands I recently tested, it’s the only one that didn’t track sleep, didn’t have an Android app (it’s iOS only) and the only one for which I had to call tech support – its setup, which requires the launch of a desktop app, was amazingly confusing. None of this is really surprising – Nike isn’t a technology company, after all.
Even with their success so far, fitness band makers in general still have much work to do, which is why I agree with some of the complaints in the Yahoo article. Most bands require frequent recharging and/or manual inputs to start some of their tracking functions, both of which are disincentives for long-term use.
Some, like the Misfit Shine – which is fully automatic with its step and sleep tracking and uses a watch battery for up to four months of power – are fixing these issues. These are the truly smart devices that will squeeze out the likes of Nike and drive the fitness band category toward its expected growth.
Wearables aren’t dead by any stretch. It’s just the weaker options that are inevitably falling by the wayside.
Technology
FuelBand's demise doesn’t mean the death of wearable tech: Peter Nowak
By Peter Nowak
(Peter Parkes/flickr)
There were a few proclamations earlier this week that wearable technology is dead in light of the news that Nike appears to be shutting down its Fuelband efforts, at least on the hardware side. The company denies it’s doing so, but it’s hard to see much of a future for the exercising-tracking wristband following the axing of most of the staff associated with it.
Yahoo Finance, for one, says the move kills the wearable revolution “before it even begins,” with writer Jeff Macke listing reasons for why fitness bands are just overblown hype. Chief among them: Nobody actually wants to go through the hassle of tracking their activity.
As luck would have it, I’ve just finished testing a range of fitness bands, including the FuelBand, for a piece I’m writing. While I can agree with some of the sentiment behind such proclamations, it’s definitely off-base to declare wearables DOA because of Nike’s woes.
I certainly have no love for smartwatches, which are a bad idea that’s difficult to execute for several reasons – as in, nobody wants to charge their watch every day, while companies such as Samsung don’t and may never cut it as fashion brands. Fitness bands, however, are one sub-category of wearables that have actually been seeing success.
READ: 5 reasons smartwatches will be forgotten: Peter Nowak
According to Canalysis, the U.S. market for them alone is expected to grow to 45 million units shipped by 2017, from 17 million this year. The reasons are simple: The devices are generally straightforward, do a few things well and are inexpensive. Smartwatches are the opposite of all of those.
The potential of a market can often be measured by the number of viable competitors operating within it. In that vein, fitness bands are a hot property, with close to 10 viable competitors in the running, including Nike, Fitbit, Jawbone, Samsung and even Sony. As Mashable notes, Nike won’t be the only one who drops out of that tight race – more losers are inevitable.
The fact that Nike looks to be bowing out is hardly a surprise, since the FuelBand has been a considerable laggard for some time. Of the five bands I recently tested, it’s the only one that didn’t track sleep, didn’t have an Android app (it’s iOS only) and the only one for which I had to call tech support – its setup, which requires the launch of a desktop app, was amazingly confusing. None of this is really surprising – Nike isn’t a technology company, after all.
Even with their success so far, fitness band makers in general still have much work to do, which is why I agree with some of the complaints in the Yahoo article. Most bands require frequent recharging and/or manual inputs to start some of their tracking functions, both of which are disincentives for long-term use.
Some, like the Misfit Shine – which is fully automatic with its step and sleep tracking and uses a watch battery for up to four months of power – are fixing these issues. These are the truly smart devices that will squeeze out the likes of Nike and drive the fitness band category toward its expected growth.
Wearables aren’t dead by any stretch. It’s just the weaker options that are inevitably falling by the wayside.