Nike might be making a new smartwatch, or follow-up for their FuelBand fitness wrist wear. The leader in fitness technology has notoriously kept their efforts focussed on iOS, shunning Android along the way. Now, we may gain insight as to why that is.
Digitimes is reporting that Nike plans to release the new device in the first half of 2014, but will probably continue to avoid Android. They’re also said to step up the FuelBand game, and offer a smart watch this time. Again, they will not be bringing this item to Android… but how can they avoid the open source platform?
By using Bluetooth Low Energy as an excuse. Nike feels that BLE is new technology, and not easy to support across devices, but that’s not a 2014 answer. Nike’s VP of Digital Sports Stefan Olander is on record as saying Nike’s iOS integration is a “quality first, scale second” concern, and BLE can’t be scaled across all devices within Android. That was a good answer last year, but as we enter 2014 — and Android begins to support BLE at its core — those are unacceptable terms. There is also nothing saying they need to support all Android handsets.
For now, we will just wonder how Nike plans to get a smart watch properly supported on iOS. The proprietary platform is said to be getting a smart watch of their own soon, so it’s unlikely they’ll support two. Android is also seeing a giant influx of smartwatches, so Nike might just be left out of the mix. Unless they start supporting Android soon — and come to the table with something awesome — Nike’s “digital sports” efforts may be in vain.
There is always an excuse is this is not a legitimate one. NIKE+ is installed on iOS. I’m sure it’s some special link they have with each other.
Is this the years ago when Android users had to beg devs to come to Android? Screw Nike, let’sdo it better.
Fitbit!
What a pussy-excuse. Android developers are given the capability to while-list or black-list any Android devices they wish…
Toolwiz is a good app.
Better..
This product is just meh anyway. Their pinhead stand on Android implementation has made me pass up Nike products on more then one occasion. I think I’ll continue to pass on more of thier products as I cannot see supporting a brand that sells out like Nike did.
As some one who develops for both iOS and Andoird i can assure you that Android BLE stack is not good. It is 3 years late. Android has BLE since IO 2013 (june), while Apple has had it since 2010/11 and Android does not even support all BLE functionalities yet( peripheral support). Most of the Android phones perform poorly when using both BLE and Wifi and it is a hardware/firmware issue which I believe can be fixed by Google, but they choose not to.
If there is one thing that Android sucks at, BLE support as of 2013 would be top of my list. Other than that Android is so much better than iOS is just about every thing.
True..well-written