Nike CEO Confirms Move Away from Wearables

Nike’s chief executive officer confirmed the sportswear giant was moving away from developing hardware and wearable technology after it was reported that the company was shuttering the team behind its FuelBand fitness-tracking device.

“We are focusing more on the software side of the experience,” Nike CEO Mark Parker said during an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street on Friday. “I think we will be part of wearables going forward, it’ll be integrated into other products that we create.”

Parker expressed hopes to grow the number of users of NikeFuel, the company’s fitness-tracking program, from 30 million to 100 million.

“Digital sport, as we call it at Nike, is incredibly important to us,” he said. “We think it’s going to be a bigger and bigger factor in terms of the experience that consumers have with the products we create.”

Parker also acknowledged Nike’s longstanding partnership with Apple but declined to say whether the two companies would collaborate on any hardware devices in the future.