When I was at school your bag and football boots had to be made by Nike, Adidas or Puma, unless you wanted to endure playground taunts. In my mind they were the holy trinity of sports gear and I’d always wondered, after hearing about the Nike+ fitness app and the Samsung Adidas miCoach F110, when Puma were going to announce some form of mobile collaboration.
In anticipation of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Sagem and Puma have announced that a Puma-branded mobile will be launched next summer before the action in South Africa kicks off. We imagine that the yet to be named Sagem/Puma phone will incorporate a number of fitness features, such as a a pedometer and heart rate tracker, and a resilient rubberised jacket to prevent against damage sustained if the phone flies out of your pocket on a run. Perhaps a GPS receiver will also be installed to help you chart your runs.
While there’s no specifications available just yet, the press release says that “The Puma phone will embrace both sport and style with features, functions, and design that reflect the DNA of the Puma brand and encourage usage of data and commerce services.”
This suggests that all of the above mentioned features may appear and the ‘data and commerce services’ bit suggests that 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity will be present, perhaps allowing you to download popular fitness apps like Fitnio and RunKeeper. Of course, this is all speculation, so we’ll just have to wait. Sagem has informed us that the Sagem Puma phone will be sold through various mobile shops and Puma outlets.
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