Apple Further Fuels 'iWatch' Speculation As It Hires 2 Ex-Nike FuelBand Engineers
July 9, 2014
Apple recently hired two key engineers from Nike's FuelBand wearable fitness tracker team, presumably to work on its very own wearable fitness tracker, the "iWatch."
As noted by 9to5Mac, Ryan Bailey and Jon Gale were hired by the iDevice maker from Nike following the sports apparel company's downsizing of its FuelBand team earlier this year. At Nike, Bailey was a Senior Test and Validation Engineer and Gale was a Senior Firmware Engineer.
Now at Apple, Bailey and Gale hold the titles of Mechanical Design Engineer and Sensing Systems Engineer, respectively. Given their experience in the field of wearable devices, they are likely working at Apple on the development of the long-rumored "iWatch."
At Nike, according to their LinkedIn profiles, Bailey worked on wearable devices and consumer electronic product development and Gale built hardware and firmware architectures for Nike Digital Sport products.
Bailey and Gale are by no means the first ones to have been hired by Apple from Nike's FuelBand team. Nearly a year ago, Jay Blahnik, a world-renowned fitness consultant who played a major role in the launch of Nike+ Running and was a key expert behind the Nike+ FuelBand, was recruited by Apple.
Apple has also hired other experts from the fields of health and fitness over the past year presumably for its iWatch team. It has also tapped key people from the fashion industry perhaps to help market the iWatch as a fashion accessory, most recently including Patrick Pruniaux, the former vice president of sales and retail at TAG Heuer.
Apple's iWatch is expected to be launched in October. According to earlier reports, it will be available in multiple display sizes and come equipped with more than 10 sensors including ones to track health and fitness.
