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Nike has officially announced its new Nike+ SportBand, which will be available on April 10. When we mentioned the Sportband a couple of days ago, there was a very limited amount of information about it yet, so we didn’t expect that aside from launching an uber cool gizmo specifically for runners, Nike was also launching the SportBand with its online runner’s coaching system – the Nike+ Coach. If that sounds familiar to you, well that’s because Adidas has a similar service in partnership with Samsung, the Adidas Mi Coach which utilizes mobile handsets instead of the SportsBand. 

As expected, the Nike+ SportBand is just like the previous Nike+iPod. But instead of providing music, Nike replaced it with a runner’s monitoring device that measures time, pace, distance and calories burned by runners at a glance on their wrist. The SportBand’s watch face doubles up as a detachable link that can be plugged into a computer for downloading into the Nike+ community site.

To add value to the SportsBand, since it would most definitely carry a high price tag, Nike is also launching Nike+ Coach. This ties up with the Nike+ portal where Nike+ members can connect to the global community of Nike runners. The Nike+ Coach is aimed at helping runners create their own training programs which they can track and share to anyone within the Nike+ community.

The Nike+ SportBand is poses a potential to become a killer device, but I wonder why Nike decided to do away with the iPod tie up and decides to replace it with the runner’s monitoring device when it can actually have both in one SportBand? 

Read [Business Wire]