Nike and Apple to create wearable that has ‘more stealth’ and is ‘more integrated’
Despite Nike having shut down its FuelBand fitness-tracking bracelet and the team that created it, wearables will still be “a big part of the future”, Nike chief executive Mark Parker has insisted.
Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg TV, Parker said that teaming with Apple for the creation of wearables allowed Nike to” do things together that we couldn’t do independently”.
He added that the plan for the company was “to expand the whole digital frontier in terms of wearables, and go from what we say is tens of millions of users – right now there’s 25 million Nike+ users – to hundreds of millions.”
Nike and Apple have been working together since 2006, having teamed on a Nike+ running sensor that connected wirelessly to a user’s iPod.
For Parker though, it is important that the wearables that are created have a function: “I think the form it takes is critical. You can go from the very geeky kind of wearables today – we’ve all seen some of those – to what I think you’ll see in the future, things that are more stealth, more integrated, more stylish and more functional, yes,” he said.
However, it is unclear whether Parker is hinting towards the creation of another FuelBand style bracelet, or something completely different.