| | September 20198By Carlos Justiniano, VP of Engineering, Flywheel Sportswo thousand and six was an epic year for Tre Kronor, the Swedish national ice hockey team. In a thrilling victory against Finland, they clinched gold at the Winter Olympics. That same year they bested (4­0) the Czech Republic to win the World Championships. Sweden became the first nation to hold both titles in the same year, a distinction they still hold today.Earlier that year and just under seven thousand miles away, Sports retail giant, Nike and then reemerging tech leader, Apple were secretly working on a revolutionary new piece of fitness tech called the Nike+iPod Sports Kit, a wireless device which connected with iPods and later iPhones. The device, placed inside a Nike shoe, enabled runners to log and monitor their runs using their iPods, all while listening to their favorite tunes.As innovative as the product was it didn't emerge from a vacuum. Like so many other innovations it was built on top of earlier advancements. The 1970s saw advancements in low-cost micropro-cessors and sensors. It was also the time when John Ber-gey led the team who developed the world's first digital watch, the Pulsar, and when digital tracking performance on cardiovascular equipment, such as treadmills and el-lipticals, became a reality. Those machines originally ap-peared in gyms, but soon found their way into our homes.The 80s and 90s saw a string of new digital prod-ucts, but it wasn't until the early 2000s that a digi-tal fitness-centric device started to emerge. In 2003, Garmin introduced its Forerunner devices. Those de-vices were bulky and akin to strapping a large late-90s flip phone onto your wrist. Despite their size, those devices were a quantum leap from the mechanical step counters, electronic pedometers and digital watches that preceded it.Over time, emerging fitness devices would decrease in size thanks to the commoditization of mobile phone components such as processors, chipsets and sensors. In many ways, modern wearable tech has been a spin-off of the near absolute ubiquity and market demand of mobile smartphones.To some, it was clear that lower costs and miniaturi-zation of wearables would lead to wider market accept-ance. James Park and Eric Friedman saw that potential A GLANCE INTO EVOLUTION OF WEARABLES AND CONNECTED FITNESS IN MY OPINIONT
< Page 7 | Page 9 >