Nike pulls out hardware competition

Recently, sportswear company Nike will terminate its business related to health smartband fuelband. Although Nike later denied this in an interview, he acknowledged that the fuelband department has been greatly reduced, that it will shift its business focus in the future, and will no longer be committed to hardware product development. Instead, it will devote more efforts to research and development. field.

In fact, Nike, as the earliest company to devote itself to wearable health monitoring equipment, is still quite aware of the direction of the industry. Since the launch of the fuelband sports bracelet for the first time in 2012 and the subsequent introduction of the fuelband se, more and more consumers have begun to change their traditional impression of Nike: conservative sports product manufacturers also have to go the high-end atmosphere on the road! Many people believe that Nike will certainly take the opportunity to take advantage of this “dongfeng” boom in wearable devices. However, Nike did not do it.

Why is this?

At first glance, some people may think that this is Nike’s complaint to wearable technology in the form of “sacrificing self”—after all, the giants such as Google, Apple, and Samsung have decided to some extent that other companies are struggling. In vain. The biggest problem that Nike faces is how to ensure the fashionable appearance of the equipment and allow consumers to remain fresh, instead of playing for a few months, leaving the purchased health monitoring equipment at a corner. For this reason, Nike chose to withdraw the hardware "battlefield" and subtly avoided a "fighting battle" that will soon begin.

Avoiding the edge

As we all know, first Google put forward the wearable device of the android wear project. Afterwards, iwatch with a big coffee apple is eager to try this year. The age of wearable devices is in full swing.

Although Nike as a market value of 60 billion US dollars, annual shipments of 120 million, only the total annual revenue in 2013 alone reached 25 billion US dollars of international companies, but in the field of fashion technology, who is willing to directly face Google and Apple? Moreover, both giants are also very concerned about the health monitoring area. Under the double pressure of Google and Apple, the day will not be better, Nike knows best.

At the same time, the relationship between Apple and Nike has been good, this point from the past Cook has worn the fuelband bracelet to attend public events can be seen. Whether Nike wants to leverage Apple's "curve to save the country" is only a guess at the moment, but according to the cnet news, Nike's efforts to force the software market are essentially based on iwatch's broader hardware platform than its own fuelband. Promote your products better.

In response, Rajeev Chand, managing director of boutique investment bank Rutberg & Co, pointed out that the wearable market has less and less room for competition. Everyone is waiting for Apple to “enlarge the game”. In this case, even Daniel Matte, an industry analyst for wearable devices at canalys research, thinks: “To tell the truth, I never thought Nike had to think hard about keeping up with Apple in the hardware market.”

get the point

When it comes to technology, the industrial chain, and the market, Nike is very clear that the model of shoemaking is completely unsuitable for health monitoring. After all, the wearable world places more emphasis on software, user interfaces, and proprietary data management.

At this point, fitbit succeeded in exporting the data from the detection device to the computer, and it was therefore favored by business users. Although Nike is not as good as fibit in this regard, its nike+running is undoubtedly one of the most popular sports app software for sportsmen.

It is understood that in 2013, the number of downloads of the nike+running single in China has exceeded 3 million, and the number of downloads worldwide has exceeded 20 million. For a sports brand that aims to promote full-fledged sports, nike+running seems to explain Nike's meaning to wearable technology and sports relations better than fuelband. For the wearable device market, which is currently playing a healthy brand, third-party applications have long been optimistic about the health data as a valuable resource. What about Nike who "holds a handful of "wealth" but doesn't know what to do?"

Technology media re/code commented that Nike “has not been able to fully tap the market”. Can it not be fully explored or is it focused on the wrong focus?

Turning to the software market - Nike seems to have seized its own focus.

“We have a lot of products that are conceptually attractive, but they still need to be improved in terms of attracting consumers and consumer experience. For Nike, letting people go to see the increasingly fierce competition and seem to be the most sensible of."