Adidas appears to be tossing in the towel on wrist-based fitness devices, following similar moves by Nike and Under Armour. The company's North American office announced a few days ago that it is discontinuing its dedicated Digital Sports business unit, which has been marketing its branded GPS running watches, fitness trackers, smart apparel and sensor-enabled footwear.
The unit's operations will be integrated across “all areas” of its business. The realigned strategy moves Adidas away from fitness-directed hardware to focus more on software. It will discontinue the Adidas All Day fitness app, which focused on yoga and wellness. The digital focus will now be on Runtastic and its relaunched Adidas app.
Runtastic, a GPS-guided exercise offering based in Austria with a 70 million user base, was purchased by Adidas for $240 million in August 2015. The recently-relaunched Adidas app provides insights about different health aspects, such as mindset, movement, nutrition and rest. It also use artificial intelligence for a more personalized shopping experience.
Adidas entered the wearable tech space 15 years ago, being one of the earliest sports companies in the market. The company's wrist-worn products included the miCoach Smart Run, a “fitness smartwatch” launched in 2013, followed in 2014 by the miCoach Fit Smart tracker.
The latest shift in strategy is said to be in line with Adidas' desire to offer more digital experiences under its new chief executive, Kasper Rorsted. The decision will affect 74 employees including data scientists, experience designers, algorithm developers and software and hardware engineers. Adidas will seek to reassign them to other operations inside the company.
In November, Under Armour confirmed that it would stop offering new fitness trackers and focus on software as part of its big Connected Fitness unit. It will still sell its fitness tracker, heart-rate strap and smart scale but has no plans for new launches, according to reports. Nike discontinued its FuelBand tracker in 2014 to focus on software and later partnered with Apple for the Apple Watch Nike+ device.
Adidas has partnered with Fitbit on the Ionic Adidas smartwatch with its Runtastic technology. The device is still expected to be launched in 2018.
