Staples is following Amazon’s lead and getting into lines of business–including home health care and personal care–totally unrelated to its core merchandise of office supplies. E-commerce blog GetElastic takes a critical look at their business goals in driving towards over a million SKUs, bringing in third-party sellers (“marketplace”) and drop-shipping, plus sourcing and stocking an extended inventory. The news for us is that one of those marketplaces could be fitness tech/wearable items that employees use in wellness programs such as Fitbits, Jawbones and FuelBands, sensors for Samsung’s S Health program–or glucose meters and blood pressure cuffs. (Already Staples stocks DME, personal care, ostomy and respiratory supplies.) And since Staples already sells smartphones, the potential for cross-selling fitness add-ons and apps is excellent. Can Staples Succeed as an Everything Store?
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Staples-home-page.jpg” thumb_width=”400″ /]iPhone 5’s health tracker-friendly chip
Lost in the somewhat fizzled debut of the iPhone 5s (the pricey one) last week was their inclusion of a “motion coprocessor” chip called the M7, which measures data generated by the phone’s accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass. Apple has also created the CoreMotion API for developers to facilitate health tracking apps, including the Nike + Move app. It’s catchup time with Samsung’s S Health surely. Medical Device + Diagnostic Industry This has fueled the expected Apple-ologist divinations on Apple’s ambitions in the wearable computing area, a taste of which you’ll see in GigaOM, though the Trojan Horse analogy is a mite overblown. Hat tip to reader Chris Paton.
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