Fires majority of FuelBand team
Nike is bowing out of the highly lucrative wearable tech market, and has fired 70 to 80% of the team responsible for their wearable tech, including their FuelBand fitness trackers, and Nike+ sportwatches. Nike’s re-aligning their efforts in the techspace, moving away from hardware products like the FuelBand, and are instead concentrating on software.
As far as the FuelBand is concerned, Nike says that it will still offer the FuelBad SE to customers who want it, and won’t be pulling the product for now. Nike’s pullout from the wearable tech scene may also have been caused by Apple, as the company is set to release their own wearable this year. Tim Cook, who was spotted wearing a FuelBand during the launch of the iPad Mini back in 2012, also sits in Nike’s board. It makes sense – Nike’s Nike+ app can provide much of the functionality of the FuelBand, while piggybacking on Apple’s supposed smartwatch.
