Tim Cook is on Nikes board...
Where's Carl Icahn when you need him?
"Help us Carl Icahn, you're our only hope." has a nice ring to it.
Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
31–40 of 86 posts
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#32Damn these people for executing the "vision" of some inept executive.
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#33I'm surprised by this. To me, it makes a lot of sense that Nike, as a fitness company, produces a wearable device for exercising. It must be a failure of my imagination, but I don't see a smart watch (in the next couple years) being both attractive to the general consumer and solving the same problems as the FuelBand does. That's partly because I can't imagine what features would make me want to buy an iWatch. So I e…
Note that the FitBit, FuelBand et al are mostly useless for exercising. They are daily activity trackers.
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#34Is it just me, or does anyone else think the term "fired" is improper in cases like this? I think the more appropriate term for when a company is changing direction, leaving a market, etc. is "laid-off". To me, "fired" denotes wrongdoing on the part of the employee. Of course, when you're trying to get page-views, Fired is likely to get more readers at the expense of the terminated employees.
It's at the expense of credibility, but it's CNet. These terms have actual meanings, "laid off" when the position is being eliminated, "fired" when it's not.
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Once Android Wear and Apple wearables start rolling out, it's going to be a slaughter out there. For Nike, its already a slaughter -- FitBit has the lion's share of the market for activity trackers, Nike was in third well behind Jawbone UP. [1] [1] http://mobihealthnews.com/28825/fitbit-jawbone-nike-had-97-p...
Those are some interesting stats, since amongst runner circles (at least here in DC), Garmins are the most popular by far. Could they be classifying these devices differently?
I think activity trackers are classified slightly different from the GPS watch market you're perceiving Garmin to dominate. DCRainmaker says Garmin's first activity monitor device was first released in early 2014.
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/01/vivofit-activity-monitors...
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#36I went to a meetup this week where the senior director of this program spoke. It was a little surprising to see that his bio had changed from his Nike affiliation to "innovator at large" when I got to the event, but I didn't think too much of it at the time.
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#37Even more amazing is that it was first reported on Secret a week ago: https://www.secret.ly/p/uxaztevdcicghcabkkczuzkpkz
So funny. I was at a conference just two weeks ago where RGA was talking about their success with the Nike FuelBand. In reality, nobody used it and the whole team got fired. Brilliant.
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#38Even more amazing is that it was first reported on Secret a week ago: https://www.secret.ly/p/uxaztevdcicghcabkkczuzkpkz
This is what happens when a bunch of MBAs and Non Engienering Produxt/UX snake oils salesmen play around too much time and money. They were one of the firsts on the field, and had every chance to make something amazing, but all I saw was mediocrity. Useless features, half-done stuff. I still use Nike+... it has the the potential to be awesome. Give me their engineering staff and 1/3 of the budget.
> "This is what happens when a bunch of MBAs and Non Engienering Produxt/UX snake oils salesmen play around too much time and money."
That's uncalled for. Engineering teams are just as capable of wasting time, money and resources. That leadership may have been at fault doesn't mean the engineers were all saints.
Edit: My point is that bad leadership is bad leadership, irrespective of background. Slamming people simply for being 'MBAs' or non-engineering is ridiculous.
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#39Nike Denies FuelBand Shutdown, but Layoffs Could Reveal New Cracks in Wearables Market
http://recode.net/2014/04/18/nike-denies-fuelband-shutdown-b...
Re: Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
#40I'm surprised by this. To me, it makes a lot of sense that Nike, as a fitness company, produces a wearable device for exercising. It must be a failure of my imagination, but I don't see a smart watch (in the next couple years) being both attractive to the general consumer and solving the same problems as the FuelBand does. That's partly because I can't imagine what features would make me want to buy an iWatch. So I e…
I suspect it's because competing products such as the FitBit come with the advantage of their companion apps being available on iOS and android, whereas the FuelBand is iOS only