In a Black Eye for Wearable Tech, Nike Giving Refunds for FuelBand
If you thought that the calorie count and steps tracked by your Nike FuelBand were inaccurate, you may have been right.
Nike and Apple have agreed to settle a class action lawsuit claiming that the companies made misleading statements regarding the product’s ability to accurately track calories and steps, according to a website maintained by settlement administrator Gilardi & Co.
The companies have denied the allegations and claim they broke no laws, but they have agreed to a settlement in which Nike will give consumers who join the class action suit by January $15 or a $25 Nike gift card. The total cost of the refunds could reach more than $2 million.
Related: Why No One is Actually Buying Wearable Tech
Anyone who purchased a FuelBand from January 19, 2012 through June 17, 2015 is eligible for the refund.
Last year, Nike began shifting its focus away from producing FuelBands, choosing instead to focus on apps, including one for the Apple watch, that support fitness tracking. The company has said it has more than 60 million digital fitness software users.
The FuelBand was an early entrant into what has become a crowded field or wearable fitness trackers, despite questions about their accuracy. However smart watches, which offer built-in fitness trackers along with other apps, may soon eclipse the demand for that standalone products.
A report released last year by tech analysts Juniper Research projected that revenue from wearable tech, would increase from $4.5 billion in 2014 to more than $53 billion in 2019.
Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues
The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.
Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops
The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.
Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates
Are interest rates destined to move higher, increasing the cost of private and public debt? While many experts believe that higher rates are all but inevitable, historian Paul Schmelzing argues that today’s low-interest environment is consistent with a long-term trend stretching back 600 years.
The chart “shows a clear historical downtrend, with rates falling about 1% every 60 years to near zero today,” says Bloomberg’s Aaron Brown. “Rates do tend to revert to a mean, but that mean seems to be declining.”
Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared
Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.
