JD.com (JD) is stepping up its battle with Alibaba Group (BABA) for a bigger piece of the online retail market in China. China’s second largest e-commerce company on Wednesday launched a cross-border e-commerce platform that will provide a new alternative for Chinese consumers to buy authentic imported products from companies including Nike (NKE) and Starbucks (SBUX). The platform, called JD Worldwide, will allow consumers to order goods from
Apple and Google might be poised to enter the market for wearable fitness and health trackers, but for now privately held Fitbit is the No. 1 seller of such devices. San Francisco-based Fitbit is the market leader, with a majority share of activity trackers sold in the first quarter, ABI Research reported Thursday. Garmin (GRMN) was in second place, followed by Nike (NKE) and Jawbone. Nike, which makes the Nike FuelBand, plans to exit the device market to focus on software for wellness trackers.
With no new products announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Wall Street analysts were left to read the tea leaves from the company’s many software updates to predict what future products Apple might have coming. Many analysts are convinced that Apple’s (AAPL) Health app for the iPhone foreshadows its entry into the wearable device market. “We expect the Health app that collects and passes along vitals to caregiving professionals will be linked to a wearable measuring device, given the fashion and health care experts Apple has been hiring,” UBS analyst Steven Milunovich said in a research note Monday. The Health app will provide a dashboard for all of a user’s health information in one place, including heart rate, calories burned and blood pressure as measured by wearable devices like Fitbit and Nike (NKE) FuelBand. The app will be included with Apple’s iOS 8 mobile device operating system, due…