Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware | Hacker News Reader

Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware

cnet.com

177 pointsbane83 comments

Even more amazing is that it was first reported on Secret a week ago: https://www.secret.ly/p/uxaztevdcicghcabkkczuzkpkz

> Mostly because the execs committed gross negligence, wasted tons of money, and didn't know what they were doing

This was my impression of how things were going even last year when they had that app development contest. It seemed a little desperate, right out of the gate.

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.

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.

The Fuelband is always lauded by the whole advertising / digital creative agency business as proof they can move beyond campaign work and actually make product. Which they all desperately want to do, but their business model is poorly set up for.

It's surprising to see it so early, but they probably see the writing on the wall. Once Android Wear and Apple wearables start rolling out, it's going to be a slaughter out there.

Apple and Nike teaming up for the iWatch launch is probably a safe bet now too.

Interesting to note that Tim Cook is on the Nike board, while iOS8 is rumored to feature a new "healthbook" type app, plus all those iWatch rumors.

Worth mentioning too that Nike has several job openings in PDX for Android engineers to work on Nike+, so clearly they're looking to shed their Apple exclusivity thus far.

Or perhaps their website hasn't kept up with the restructuring? On another note, why are these reports saying the engineers were "fired"? It's one thing to be let go when a project was discontinued but nobody wants the stigma of being fired on their record.

Unfortunetly a lot of people slopply use fired as an exact synonym for redundancy or layoffs Its not!

One would have hoped that a suposedly jounalistic endevour would use correct language for fear of beiing sued for "professional slander"

> 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...

from what i've seen of the fitness tracker market, the customers buying these aren't typically athletes, they're dieters. People buying devices to track their workouts are a smaller market than people buying wristbands to track their steps over the course of a workday. Fitbit is for people who want a record of the fact that they took the stairs instead of the elevator every day this week.

Fitbit has absolutely nailed the user experience. It's incredibly simple. The battery lasts forever. Plus they've found the perfect level of gamification to make the thing a viral hit. In my social circle, at the very least, the thing has basically taken over. Everyone has one. Everyone is pushing it on their friends because they want to compete against them too.

They have a really nice business going. I have to believe that is miles ahead of what Garmin is doing (which is definitely a different type of tracking).

My fiancee is a runner and I recently purchased her a Garmin GPS watch as a gift. I had originally planned to buy a FitBit, but they're just not meant for the same thing as the Garmin watch. The Garmin is useful when you are actually running to figure out your pace, distance, etc. The FitBit is more of a logging device and you don't really look at it while running. The FitBit doesn't have a screen, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a GPS.

Possibly this http://fellrnr.com/wiki/GPS_Accuracy

It seems Garmin is more accurate.

I saw it on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/236lqy/gps_...

I can see iWatches as a big market for a startup, or add-on for Nike - but not for Apple. The profits can't move their meter.

The problem is input: Apple solved it for phones (touch screen). They tried voice-recog for shuffle iPod, but dropped it in the next iteration. If they really are making a mass-market iWatch, I think they must have solved this problem in some other way. (Glass solves it, so maybe it won't be a watch...)

I find it interesting that voice-reco is a primary input mechanism for both the Amazon Fire TV and Amazon's scanner gadget for their Fresh grocery delivery service. The Fire TV is not on battery power, so it's not surprising there. But the scanner wand gadget presumably doesn't have much of a CPU in it, nor does it rely on a nearby smartphone.

Yes, they claim their voice reco "really works" - I don't find it a credible claim... except that, when you have a confined univese of possible matches (e.g. grocery items), it doesn't so much have to recognise the word, as distinguish between the known candidates. For example, just counting the number of syllables can narrows it down (even identif it: yif expecting a digit, only "7" has two). And no verbs etc.

Isn't the scanner online (so it can tell amazon what you ordered)? If so, I expect it uses servers, like siri and google voice. (Also processors are pretty small these days: the CPU in a phone takes up dramatically less space than the display or battery).

They can back the voice recognition with mechanical Turk. If the recognizer has a lower confidence than desired they just ship the sample to a human.

They may have scrubbed voice recognition in anticipation of an iWatch-like product.

How certain is everyone that Apple will launch a wearable? I just don't see it personally.

Right now wearables are in a pre iPhone era. I guess people are waiting for an iWatch, let's see which company delivers.

It's certain, they're working on it, and have hired some of the best people in the world for things like skin sensors (blood glucose, etc).

Update: Nike confirmed a small number of layoffs but denies FuelBand shutdown, according to re/code:

  “The Nike+ FuelBand SE remains an important part of our
  business,” the company said in a statement emailed to
  Re/code. “We will continue to improve the Nike+ FuelBand App,
  launch new METALUXE colors, and we will sell and support the
  Nike+ FuelBand SE for the foreseeable future.”

http://recode.net/2014/04/18/nike-denies-fuelband-shutdown-b...

All: should we change the url of the post to this one? It's not clear which is better.

Edit: there are arguments on both sides. Since the Cnet article seems to be the original source, let's stick with it.

I would say yes. Fixing misinformation (even honest misinformation) on the front page is a good thing.

i don't think it's clear that there's any misinformation in the cnet article. Nike is officially denying killing the product, but they aren't denying that they've laid off the majority of their hardware team.

It says they will stop making wearable hardware in the title, which Nike is flatly denying.

not really. They said they will continue to sell the current device and support it with software. They make no claims to possibly making any new hardware as far as I could see.

I don't think we should be changing titles/urls of articles just because a company made a statement denying something. CNET is making a claim. Nike is denying it. That's not grounds for changing titles.

Companies, people, and governments deny things that turn out to be true all the time. I'm not saying Nike is lying. Just that their denial is not clear evidence of misinformation.

Is 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.

Having a US head-office I'm frequently bemused / confused as to why companies in that country so readily lay-off the staff of canceled projects, instead of redeploying them internally to fill other vacancies.

Particularly in large corps there's nearly always some other division crying-out for staff with hands-on knowledge of their industry and product, instead of spending $50,000 to hire someone out of college and then train them.

Because American companies don't do any training.

I don't know the particulars of the Nike position. In general it can be because of geography (if the cancelled project was run out of a different region, which can be especially true for skunkworks or acquihired teams), or job specificity (it's not clear how many sensor engineers, low-power engineers, or even hardware and software engineers Nike needs if it's not dong projects like this).

My guess is because the decision is made at a high level that a whole project is to be killed, and in order to keep that decision compartmentalized the decision is made to lay off the entire staff rather than bringing in mid-level managers to make decisions on who should stay and who should go, which would probably cause the news to leak early.

It also makes it a bit better for the laid-off employees. If you keep 50% and fire 50%, the ones that got let go have a much harder sell to their next employer. If you can shrug it off and say 'the whole project got canceled', no negativity is cast on that particular employee.

There is also some HR/legal things related to the difference between eliminating positions and firing people. It is easier to claim that the positions are eliminated if you axe the whole project.

Then what typically happens swiftly after the lay off is the company offers to re-hire the best performers from that team immediately. I have seen that in 20 person startups and 100,000 person companies.

The whole thing is always ugly. In my mind the worst part is when a company heavily recruits a top performer from elsewhere in the company or externally to come work on this project when it is 80% of the way to the cliff, generally by mis-representing the situation, and then axes the whole thing 3 months later. I have seen many people burned by that scenario.

What other projects do Nike have that they need a staff of computer software and hardware engineers to work on?

Laid off is sligly diferent from being made redundant.

Being laid off means that your job still exists but there is no work for it to do at present; they expect that work will pick up shortly and you will thus be taken back to do it.

Redundant means the job is gone and not coming back.

These gadgets might make a nice 'halo' product for a big Nike Town store, however, from a general retail perspective these fairly standalone electronic gadgets are a pain to stock, sell and process when they come back as returns.

They just don't sell the units to justify the floor space or the capital for the stock. Plus there is always someone online that can sell them cheaper without the hassle of a customer cluttering the shop for an hour whilst they evaluate the purchase. Staff are not knowledgeable on such items and, in the time that one gadget is sold, that member of staff could help untold other customers on products that are core business.

I am sure that Nike could take on all comers with 'first mover advantage' with wearable gadgets. They could even do a Facebook and buy out the likes of 'strava'. However, these gadgets don't sell too well through the normal retail channels that Nike rely on for most of their sales.

I'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 expect that Nike's going to be forced to compromise functionality to fit the limited capabilities of general-purpose devices.

For example, Craig's proposed iRing doesn't even mention tracking motion activity: http://furbo.org/2014/03/13/wearing-apple/

Also, maybe it's the specific app I use, but using the M7 kills battery life on my 5S.

> I'm surprised by this. To me, it makes a lot of sense that Nike, as a fitness company, produces a wearable device for exercising.

I'm not surprised -- they've been pouring money into marketing, and yet not coming within a mile of the leader (FitBit) in the activity tracker market.

> 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.

They aren't getting out because of the possibility of future smartwatches, they are getting out because they are getting killed by what's on the market and popular now.

I would agree, but hey Apple does have the brightest people on board to make the new iWatch both sexy for the masses and extremely useful. I was looking at either Fitbit or Misfits Wearable, both extremely well designed, and one of them is coming from te "hands" of an ex apple engineer

Does that jive with their stated plan to do software only? Does the FitBit hardware have an open API that Nike could integrate with?

Or are they stepping back and waiting for Google, Samsung, Apple, etc, to make a successful hardware device? Whether that's things like the M7 in smartphones or an extra device.

> Does the FitBit hardware have an open API that Nike could integrate with?

Yes: http://dev.fitbit.com/

I imagine the iWatch will primarily be a Fitbit/Fuelband competitor, with some extra features. Like a pulse sensor.

If anyone can make what is essentially a pedometer sexy and mass-market, it's Apple. I'll be very surprised if they come out with anything that resembles a "smart watch", save for perhaps Pebble-style notifications.

A "fitbit with extra featres" would be underwhelming. Anything that is not revolutionary on the scale of the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad would not be credible as a core Apple product - which is what Wall Street is crediting the iWatch with being. If Apple did come out with a FitBit competitor they'd be wise to avoid the "watch" moniker, perhaps going with iFit, iBand or something similar.

Note that the FitBit, FuelBand et al are mostly useless for exercising. They are daily activity trackers.

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

That's probably a factor, but Nike's braindead marketing for FuelBand is probably a factor. If you look at who buys activity trackers, IME, its largely people who have trouble maintaining commitment to exercise that need something to help them, and FuelBand's advertising is a lot about how it isn't for you and will make you feel worse if you aren't already fully committed.

Hmm, so nobody has brought up the possibility of some sort of Apple + Nike collusion (for lack of a better word) here?

Cook sits on the Nike board. Who's to say he didn't let the folks at Nike in on what Apple were working on and the two companies decided to make some sort of deal seeing as the two products would have areas of overlap.

I can see a scenario where Nike features prominently as a partner for Apple's wearable products.

It's possible that there won't be an Apple iWatch as such, but instead a platform like Google Wear for others to develop on. But such a thing is hard to keep secret once you've told a dozen partners about it.

I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of the laid-off employees end up working at Apple.

Not a fortuneteller but my guess is they're giving up way too early. One of the few mass-market, non-tech companies that actually had a shot in wearables.

With the iPhone having the M7 built-in is there any need for the Nike FuelBand? I find data from the M7 to be quite accurate. Seems like they can just create the software and let Apple (and eventually Android device makers) build the hardware.

But you can't always have your phone with you. It's not effective for the same use-case when you've handed it to someone else to use the phone or when you're out playing soccer (well some people might keep their phone on them on the field but I don't).

I use a Garmin Forerunner. Before I used an iPhone. Not only is the Forerunner a far more accurate GPS and has better battery life, it's also far more convenient to 'carry' during running, since it's a simple and compact watch. Also, it's easy to monitor your stats at any moment, in contrast to iPhone arm bands.

In the end smart watches will probably eat this market. But the iPhone is certainly not a substitute.

The iPhone's still a heavy, bulky, expensive and fragile thing to take with you to the gym or out running, as are other smartphones. The screen is also not easy to interact with while you're exercising seriously. However, smartwatches or smartglasses with 5s-level-or-better motion sensing and the capacity to run apps independently of a smartphone do have to the potential to make dedicated fitness trackers mostly obsolete, though expense and fragility will still be concerns.

EDIT: This Gruber reaction http://www.cnet.com/news/nike-fires-fuelband-engineers-will-... heightens my suspicion that this is an early omen of an Apple smartwatch launch.

Nike Denies FuelBand Shutdown, but Layoffs Could Reveal New Cracks in Wearables Market

http://recode.net/2014/04/18/nike-denies-fuelband-shutdown-b...

Not sure I'm totally convinced of this software only argument.

I think of Nike as a brand that stands for high performance equipment.

Shoes, T-shirts, Golf Clubs, etc.

The software they have built around Nike+ has always felt second rate compared to software focused companies like Runkeeper.

I enjoyed my Nike Fuel band and was always hoping to see more innovation on this front from them.

I suppose they had to pick one or the other. This move allows them to have a fitbit software integration which will be big.

I would have stuck with high performance health monitoring hardware and integrated with every software vendor.

I'm seeing this from the bottom up in other areas. The general question being asked is "Isn't this actually just an app? Do we really need the device too?" And very often the answer is it's just an app.

The Google coming in factor is not to be underestimated, however, what appears to be going on there is Google effectively ensuring no one (except Apple) gets to make money on wearable hardware. Apple will steal the premium sector, again, (mix of iOS compatibility, prestige branding and likely a couple of out there features) but because Google seem to view it as a way to attach Google Now to your wrist first and potentially profitable app ecosystem very distant second they'll drive the price of the hardware down to the point Nike's decision here looks very wise indeed.

The ad/search business is to Google what Windows is to Microsoft, and in order to create new profit centres they really need to forget it.

You're reasoning is completely off. Google's Android wearables ensures nobody makes money on wearable OS i.e. software. Google has actually opened the door for companies to now make money on the wearables hardware since the software is standard. While Google launched wearable by focusing on the Now integration, there are still hints that fitness apps will be there at launch of the smartwatches. This is the first time Google and Apple are launching in a new category at the same time, it's a bit premature to conclude that Apple will capture the high-end (although they do have iOS customer captive in their ecosystem)

Nike doesn't figure into this at all. The fuelband never even worked with Android devices (Tim Cook holding a spot on the Nike board for the past 9 years might do something with that). Mike's play is to get out of the wristband business before Apple jumps in while keeping their Nike+ integration with Apple via software and SHOES (Nike's real business) as done previously. However if this new upcoming Nike+ API can be used by Android devices it would represent the first real shift in Nike's strategy

Honestly, Google does prevent almost anyone from making money off the hardware as well. I was at an Android OEM when Google first started sourcing their own Nexus line at cut throat prices and Android hardware projects were definitely canceled because we just couldn't compete with Google. Samsung is about the only one that can since they have massive economic advantages due to making most of their own parts. Other Android OEMs make very little numbers or profit.

Hardly any consumers know about the Nexus line. I'd say that's the last thing an Android OEM should be worried about. The biggest problem is consumer awareness (the same problem the Nexus line faces), especially when the carriers are in control, like in the US.'

Unfortunately, using Samsung's approach of overwhelming the public conscious with advertising isn't feasible for a lot of smaller OEMs, who don't have the sort of capital necessary to do that. However, signs of hope are developing, if you take an ultra-lean approach to producing and selling the phone[0].

0: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/moto-g-boo...

My wife finds the FuelBand so ugly she almost finds it offensive. She's a pretty normal woman, and I'm not suggesting all women feel that way, but it bears reminding that anything worn on a wrist is actually a fashion accessory for a lot of people.

Shame too, as it was a nice piece of hardware.

You can see a great teardown and explanation of the internals from mike at mikeselectricstuff here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xdajSS_cOU

Interesting timing isn't it, Apple is rumoured to be making a wearables push and Nike has a cosy relationship there. Maybe they've realised they don't need to make the hardware to further their aims.

Or, maybe Nike want to refine their product base and the Fuelband isn't a big enough seller to justify the ongoing cost. I think the wearables market is some what saturated at the moment and to stand out from the crowd Nike would need to make a large push. Shame as I liked their purposefully chunky aesthetics.

stop making wearable hardware

...including shoes?

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.

I 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.

I'm guessing Nike isn't abandoning the FuelBand (or Nike+), just their in-house hardware team. Wristbands are commodities now, so someone in management might have decided to outsource.

I returned my FuelBand once Nike broke their promise of developing an Android app. It seems like there was a lot of confusion on the team.

I liked the FuelBand, but never bought one. Hopefully Nike either partners with Apple or they make an App.

Me too.

I've yet to find a wearable device I can take to the gym and extract the data from myself. Most of them use online sites and proprietry/undocumented storage formats.

Damn these people for executing the "vision" of some inept executive.

Total market / large number of players = unsustainable business.

Or maybe the first wave of the next set of things becoming smart. $12 phone http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040 means maybe we get shoe-phones after all.

in my opinion wearables like that should look more like "classic looking" connected watches ,rather than a SciFi looking wrist band. But there is a market, definetly. the connected stuff should be a feature not the main point of the product.

The point of a phone is to actually phone, all the apps/internet stuffs are features of that phone.

At least that how i see how one can market these products.

This is my biggest nightmare. Consumer choice being limited due to corporate politics and killing innovation for bottom line because of old school corporate thinking.

Imagine working on a product, getting bought out, and seeing your hard work being dumped in the garbage because that was already their plan. Sure, you might have millions, but did you really make a change in the world? I think it would be an empty experience.

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