Adidas finally announced that it has withdrawn from the wearable market. In the hardware attempt of the sports brand, the sports big brands collectively rushed to the street. The first thing that went out was Nike. It is reported that Adidas is no longer independent of making wearable devices, but still has not given up cooperation with Fitbit.
Finally, Adidas also announced that it has withdrawn from the market for wearable devices.
A number of foreign media quoted "Portland Business Magazine" reported that Adidas is shutting down the company's hardware division, and the affected product lines include fitness watches, Bluetooth running shoes and other wearable smart devices.
It is understood that Adidas's shutdown of the hardware department is one of the many adjustments to the restructuring of the company's digital department. The German sports brand hopes to compress the company's digital products business. After adjusting and adjusting, Adidas' own mall application and its sports fitness application RuntasTIc, which was acquired in 2015 for US$240 million, will become the company's digital products division. Key business.
Similar to the cooperation between Nike and Apple, Adidas will not continue to make wearable devices independently, but their cooperation with Fitbit will continue. The Adidas special version of the Fitbit Ionic watch will be launched in 2018.
Adidas intends to give up the news of wearable devices, and there have been some signs since last year. Stacey Burr, the company's vice president of wearable sports electronics, said in an interview with the media that after the launch of the smart sports watch Smart Run, "Adidas will not launch a new running watch for a long time in the future. The hardware game is coming The harder it is to play... When we first launched Smart Run, there weren't as many sports watches or hardware on the market. Now, as more and more big companies enter this field, the ecology of the hardware has changed dramatically."
The big companies that Stacey said are those mobile phone manufacturers who have entered the market late but have occupied most of the market day by day. Under the pressure of these manufacturers, the sports brands that had hoped to gain something in this market, like Adidas, lost after trying.
Sports big name collective street
The first to go out is Nike.
In 2014, along with the product line of the Fuelband bracelet and the Nike+ series of sports watches, Nike cut off the company's digital sports hardware team. Like this Adidas adjustment, Nike decided to use the company Digital Sport at the time. The department's focus has also shifted to mobile applications, and has developed a number of excellent sports-assisted applications including Nike+ Run Club and Nike Training Club. On the hardware side, although he no longer does hardware independently, Nike chose to work with Apple to launch its brand-specific Apple Watch dial and strap.
In addition to Adidas and Nike, Under Armour, which has been very difficult recently, also abandoned its once-hard-worn hardware division this year.
At CES 2016, HTC has demonstrated its wearable HealthBox, designed in collaboration with An Dema, including the UA Band, UA Heart Rate and UA Scale. At the time, these products became a very prominent presence in the CES exhibition area. Anderma once showed its ambition in the wearable device market. In addition to the aforementioned HealthBox series products, Gemini 2 RE, a smart running shoe product, was also launched.
HealthBox kit
But just two months ago, when Anderma’s quarterly sales fell for the first time, news of the reorganization of the wearables team came out. An Dema official said that it will no longer continue to make fitness wearable devices, instead of focusing on software that can be used on other smart devices, such as the Samsung Gear series of smart watches and Apple Watch.
For these big-name sports manufacturers, the lack of genetic development in electronic devices has led them to repeatedly hit the wall in smart hardware attempts, but the strong brand identity still allows them to benefit from cooperation with hardware manufacturers, and sports fitness The accumulation of data and user trust required for software services is what they are good at.
From this perspective, although Nike, An Dema and Adidas have lost from the wearable market, they are still able to use their advantages to gain a lot of services outside the hardware.
Mobile phone manufacturers are becoming mainstream players in the wearable market
In the past two years, there have been many changes in mainstream players in the wearable market. Fitbit, which was once far ahead, was gradually caught up by Xiaomi, but both markets have shown signs of being eaten by Apple and Huawei.
2017 Q3 wearable device market patternAccording to IDC, the market share of Apple's wearable devices has increased by 52.4% in the past year. Huawei has increased frantically by 156.4%, ranking fourth in market share after Apple. In contrast, the former industry leader Fitbit, its market share has dropped sharply from 21.9% to 13.7% in the past year. Although it still ranks first with Xiaomi, its trend is self-evident.
Mobile phone manufacturers have sprung up in the wearable market, which not only brings a lot of pressure to the traditional wearable manufacturers, but also some brands that have been "small and beautiful" have gradually disappeared in the market.
At the end of 2015, Misfit came out with the acquisition of the American lifestyle brand Fossil. The 2011 wearable brand just launched its newest product, Misfit Shine 2, in Beijing, which has won many praises from users and the media. But in the face of veteran maker Fitbit and the background of the "new industry" Apple Watch, Misfit eventually chose the fashion group Fossil Group, which sold itself to the brand more "orthodox".
A year later, Pebble, who was also a startup, made the same decision, but Pebble's luck was not so good compared to selling his own Misfit when it was in the limelight. At the end of 2016, Fitbit announced the official acquisition of Pebble, a smart watch company. Pebble was one of the most successful projects on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, and its smart watch product was named the best smart watch by The Verge. In 2015, Pebble resolutely rejected the $740 million acquisition offer from watch maker CiTIzen, and the final price of Fitbit for it was only a fraction of this figure: $40 million.
The rise of multiple mobile phone manufacturers is not a coincidence. Affected by the current product form and interactive form, smart bracelets and watches must rely on mobile phones to achieve better applications. At this point, mobile phone manufacturers naturally have the dual advantages of the number of users and open system support. Binding the iOS app to the watch app directly in the App Store is a very typical example, and the popularity of Apple Watch sales has a lot to do with the high loyalty of iPhone users.
In addition, in terms of hardware design, mobile phone manufacturers often have very rich experience, more understanding of the needs of users, but also can better control the fine-tuning and details. In the product iteration process, startups often need a longer R&D design cycle, and mobile phone manufacturers accustomed to launching a number of flagship models each year can better meet the needs of consumers for upgrading. In the market competition, even if the advantages of the product itself are not obvious, the frequent update process can still break the short-term sales bottleneck with high efficiency.
Under such multiple advantages, even experienced veteran wearers such as Fitbit and Garmin can hardly maintain their own advantages, and those small manufacturers who are still unable to compete directly with mainstream players can often only sell themselves. Difficult choices in death. Judging from the current market structure, the shuffling of the wearable industry seems to be coming to an end. The market that once bloomed has gradually become a foregone conclusion. In the current product form, the balance has already tilted.
The sports brands that have chosen to voluntarily withdraw in the past two years have recognized the cruel competition rules of the hardware market from the dismal sales. Now, both Nike and An Dema have made some achievements in software applications, and Adidas will also focus resources on this direction. Although the brand's professional reputation cannot provide them with stable hardware sales, it can provide a trustworthy endorsement for software services.
At this point, the top three sports brands in the US have come to an end in the wearable industry. Adi, Nike and An Dema have been adding more technological elements to their brands, but technology is not limited to smart hardware. In the field of more and more scientific methods and machine-assisted sports and fitness, the exploration of these three companies There are more breakthrough opportunities for transformation.
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