Can Fuhu make fitness fun for families?

 Washington: The company behind the nabi Tab, the first tablet designed from the ground up for children, is turning its attention to health-focused wearables.

The nabi Compete Competitive Bands for Kids take a gamified approach to fitness that is based around collaboration as much as competition in an attempt to make health and as a result future well-being fun and easy to understand.

Jim Mitchell, CEO of Fuhu, said, "As we enter the wearables market, we wanted to find a way that would really utilize technology to help parents encourage their kids to get active in a fun way, not in a way that would be perceived as being a task. To that end, in designing nabi Compete we looked closely at what keeps kids engaged with gaming, social interaction, friendly competition and performance rising to the top of our list."

The band comes in pairs so that it's simpler and cheaper (just $39.99) for more members of the family or a social circle to get involved. The bands can be customized and are designed for wearers age six, onwards.

Like other health and fitness-focused wearables, the bands work via an app and can count steps, record activity and help monitor calorie intake. However, rather than bore kids with data or graphs, calorie burn, for instance is presented in terms of things like cheeseburgers or slices of pizza. Likewise daily challenges and competitions are grounded in the real world.

Fuhu hopes that as well as making fitness more interesting, its latest devices can help children develop healthier habits and one of the elements that could help in this regard is virtual pets. Kids will have to look after an animal as one of their daily activities, which can be fed via reward points from performing challenges or hitting targets. Its health will also give children an edge during challenges.

The final touch is connection to Fuhu's own child-friendly social network where band wearers will be able to offer each other support or just share how they're feeling.