“For a company as secretive as Apple, one of the few ways you can learn anything about what it has planned next is to see who it has been hiring. High-profile hires say a lot about where Apple’s priorities are for the future,” Alex Heath reports for Cult of Mac.
“Looking back at the hires Apple has brought on over the last year reveals something pretty obvious: it’s assembling a wearables and fashion dream team,” Heath reports. “The list of 17 hires collected by Morgan Stanley shows 9 positions related specifically to wearable or medical health fields. This obviously isn’t all of the hires Apple has made in recent months, but it paints a good picture of what Apple is interested in.”
“Two key hires Apple made from Nike include Jay Blahnik and Ben Shaffer. Both men were key in the making of the FuelBand,” Heath reports. “It’s curious that Nike has ceased future development of the FuelBand with Apple’s wearable rumored to see the light of day in October.”
Read more, and see the list of Apple’s wearables and fashion hires, in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
tim Cook is on Nike’s Board.
I suspect unlike Schmidt he worked it out with Nike to what Apple was planning and Nike stopped it’s Fuel Band with some kind of accommodation with Apple.
‘Accommodation’ — a much more pleasant word than ‘Ripoff.’
yeah,
Just speculating but it could be a cash payout, licensing deal or product tie-in (sensor in shoes etc to Apple’s wearable device?).
If it’s actually a deal between Apple Nike Win-win is better than stealing , everyone makes $$$ and feel good.
Google makes more money on iOS now than Android, imagine if Google had cooperated with Apple instead of stealing they would be tied in tightly with Apple’s system now (probably no apple maps etc) , without android iOS might be much larger marketshare, both would have raked in a lot more $$$. Now if we factor Motorola losses Google actually loses money on Android. Samsung must be shaking it’s head at Googles stupidity , most of the android profits are actually going to it than Google (most Chinese android phones don’t run Google search or services).
Plus Apple’s engineering and design chops handily beat Nike’s.
=:~)
And it is very expensive for Nike to try to enter a sub-category of electronics where it is not a player and be cost efficient at it.
The technical expertise of an advanced Nike product still wouldn’t have either the level of advanced materials or programming available routinely to Apple in its products.
Yes means completely different things too, except to the cynical. Actually I’m cynical too just prefer some evidence and knowledge of the products to be compared before letting it loose.
Velcro, What a RIP OFF!!!!!
Cook heads up the tech Trojan Horse that is Apple Inc. Yikes!
I hope Phil Schiller doesn’t head up the fashion team!! Haha!
Phil: “I was wrong. Apple CAN innovate my ass.”
Well, whatever. I guess Apple is now going to make fashion clothing. The beginning of the end.
Apple made iPod socks in multiple bright colours for many years and somehow managed to survive.
We should not confuse “stylish” with “fashionable”. Fashion a fickle, transient look and is often rather strange, while stylish items look stylish for a very long time. Fashion is fashionable for a season, while style endures.
There’s always one, best put up the Apple is doomed clock again.
Ralph Lauren has announced a health monitoring polo t-shirt. Is underwear next? 🙂
Couldn’t rule it out, particularly for the older half of the world’s population.
In the US, with rising medical costs in insurance, copays, deductibles & the actual medicines and services paid for, the ONLY thing an individual can do to lower lifetime medical costs is to do straightforward 2 spcific things:
1. Making best choices in avoiding known bad things for their health and
2. Detecting the earliest changes leading to medical problems through personal monitoring/testing.
We have roughly 1/5 th of all dollars spend on medical/health issues each year in the US and a majority of those $s spent over age 45.
Hence, it is very clear what younger people must do to retain their health. They must minimize their medical problem costs and limitations on their lifestyle as they get older by making the right decisions today.
As someone who is older and watched friends and family who have ignored the known problems & signs from personal choices they made & their genetics, it is obvious Apple sees these issues.
Steve Jobs spent a fortune trying to stay alive longer and no one wants to be in that position as we won’t have his wealth to try to live longer.
The only choice for us is better personal choices and personal testing and monitoring for problems to address them early.
Apple is on the right track and I believe it is a monumentally large market that is only barely being addressed to date.
iPhones are the logical “health logging device” because of their storage and computing power, so Apple has a huge lead in entering this mega-market. Apple will need expert sensor developers and medical experts to assist in these arenas, so I expect to see those people added to Apple’s staff, too.
I predict that the first Apple wearable–the “iWatch” or whatever we’re calling it now–will actually be released as a product with Beats branding. I don’t think the Beats purchase was about a radio app, I think it was about securing a “cool” brand for wearables. There are more Beats headphones at my gym these days than white earbuds.
Hmmmm…! Interesting thought!
That’s a prediction I’d put money on. Beats headphones. Beats wristbands. Beats pendants. Question: will it have the Apple logo on it?
Good question. I think Beats has brand recognition that adds value, but how to combine Apple and Beats is a tough question. It will be complicated, maybe Apple Beats [Android]? or Apple Beats [just about anything]?
As I have often said most likely Beats will be used to expand in product lines that App,e would not wish to use the Apple brand on and thus water down its appeal. Beats can go places and test appeal and products in ways that the Apple brand would never wish to touch.
“wearable” pacemaker monitor – heartBeats…