Microsoft updates Band with music controls, activity reminders, and improved exercise tracking
Stay on top of it all during the holidays and have fun too, with the new Microsoft Band — Today, we are excited to announce several new features exclusively for the new Microsoft Band …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's $249 Band 2 arrived October 30 with Cortana integration and a curved screen, but the early review flagged slow GPS and a weak clasp alongside praise for its guided workouts — so this December update lands mid-holiday-season as pure software polish on a device already on shelves. It follows a year of deliberate distribution build-out: the spring push into Amazon, Target, Best Buy and the UK plus the May release of the full developer SDK had positioned the Band as a platform, not just a gadget.
First-order effects
- Existing Band 2 owners get music controls, activity reminders, and sharper exercise tracking as a free firmware update rather than an upgrade purchase, directly softening the flaws reviewers cited two months earlier.
- Holiday shoppers at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy are comparing a slightly better product at the unchanged $249 price during the peak gifting window.
Second-order effects
- Free post-launch feature drops raise the bar for how quickly fitness-band rivals must ship fixes, since Microsoft is using software cadence to offset hardware shortcomings instead of waiting for a Band 3.
- Every improvement deepens the value of the developer SDK ecosystem, giving third-party app builders a larger installed base to target on Microsoft Health.
Third-order effects
- If hardware margins stay thin while the Health service accrues the real value, the logical endpoint is what sources later reported: [[a:874524|Microsoft weighing discontinuation of the Band itself to focus on its cross-platform Health service]] — the band becoming disposable, the service durable.
The trend: Wearable makers are shifting competitive value from the band hardware itself toward the cross-platform health software layer behind it.