Once hyped as the Next Big Thing, wearable fitness trackers like the Fitbit and Nike Fuelband have fallen off in popularity.
The main complaint is that they're just not that essential: If you walk five blocks from your apartment to realize that you forgot your tracker, you're probably not going to turn around to get it, and a 2014 report found that half of all people buy wearables no longer use them.
But what if the "wearable" part of the wearable computing device were embedded in something you already wear, like sneakers?
Therein lies the cleverness of a product sketched in a patent that Nike filed last week.
According to the document, this figure "illustrates an environment in which an athletic parameter measurement according to various of examples of the invention may be employed."
Trying to translate that corporate speak into normal English, it sounds like this is a little wearable computing device embedded within the construction of the shoe, which can communicate with a smartphone, presumably via the Nike+ fitness tracking app.
As spotted on Quartz, those kicks could track your distance, your time, and your calories burned, then send that data to Nike to suggest new routes and goals.
The patent itself isn't for the shoe specifically. The patent regards an "Athletic performance user interface for mobile device" developed to help motivate people to reach their athletic goals.
So the successor of the Fuelband may be Nike's original product: the shoe.
