In their own image…
Like many, I’m happy to see development continue around Nike+, but I’m also a little dismayed to see development mostly on the hardware front rather than the software/services front. This news, along with the latest releases: Amp+, and the SportBand, are pretty telling for me in terms of the direction of thinking for this platform.
All signs point to Nike+ continuing to be a closed system where limited access is granted to certain partners, and continuing to be thought of as a product innovation rather than a service innovation.
In some ways this point-of-view seems quite reasonable. Apple and Nike have been legendarily protective over their brands and their assets. Apple, of course, refused (for the most part) to license its OS. And while Adidas has created several notable partnerships like Y3 and adidas by Stella McCartney, Nike so far has refrained from high profile mashups like these.
In both cases, the overriding raison d’etre has been to control the quality of the user-experience. And, there’s no denying their success. On any list of the world’s best brands, these two will be at the top.
However, I think they may have forgotten their own lessons in this case.
Much of the iPod’s success wasn’t driven by hardware, it was driven by software: by a service – iTunes – that created an open platform for content and services of all different kinds. It has become richer as its openness has increased, as it has added more artists, more songs, more movies and more services. iTunes is arguably the most valuable piece because it makes using any other hardware (regardless of how good that hardware is) a bit disappointing.
Similarly, Polar and Garmin among others have created enhanced pedometers, but what put Nike+ over the top was the software (although there’s still work to be done there) not the hardware. To me, the real value lies in enhancing and improving the Nike+ service. As I wrote previously, the value of many things today is not in the thing itself, it’s in the services that enable the thing. There’s still so much value locked up, I hope they start to realise it soon.
