One of the biggest trends over the past year or so has been using your smartphone to help improve fitness, and unfortunately, most of the accessories for this task have been released for the iPhone and iPhone. While we don’t have any for sure explanation for this, we can assume its due to the sheer number of Android devices it takes to compete with iPhone sales. Nike, however, released its FuelBand last year and promised that an Android app would come by Summer…of 2012. As the company obviously missed that date, it continued to assure users that a companion app would be available. Today, though, Nike revealed some incredibly disappointing news to us Android fans. The company says, that in order to deliver the best experience to FuelBand users, it has decided to focus on its iOS and abandon the Android app
“To deliver the best experience for all Nike+ FuelBand users, we are focusing on the FuelBand experience across iOS and nikeplus.com, where you can sync your activity, set new goals, and connect with friends. At this time, we are not working on an Android version of the mobile app.”
FuelBand users have a right to be upset. The company promised a companion app for Android, prompting many users to go ahead and purchase the wrist band, only to now be disappointed by Nike. Outrage is already brewing about this news on Twitter and we can only expect the complaints to grow over the next couple of days. And rightfully so. If a multi-billion dollar company promises something, it had better fulfill that promise unless it wants to be universally hated by the upset user base, which in this case, is quite a few people.
The Nike FuelBand is a wrist band that you can wear to track health statistics such as calorie intake, steps, and energy burned. All of these stats are converted into Nike’s “Fuel Point” system, allowing users everywhere of the FuelBand to compete with eachother. The idea is that one person will see that their friend has earned far many more Fuel Points than they have and then be motivated to go exercise.
What do you think of Nike’s decision to scrap the FuelBand Android app? Are you upset? Let us know down in the comments!