AMAZON UNVEILS FITNESS BAND

Amazon.com Inc on Thursday launched its first fitness band and app, Halo, as the e-commerce giant looks to take on Apple, Fitbit and Samsung in an increasingly crowded fitness tracker market. The Halo band, which does not feature a display screen unlike most of its rivals, is priced at US$99.99, while the app membership costs US$3.99 per month, Amazon said. The scope of growth in the fitness band market has prompted tech giants such as Apple Inc and Samsung to introduce many sophisticated features for health tracking. In comparison, Amazon has featured a relatively new technology called tone analysis. When enabled, a microphone on the band listens to detect emotions such as happiness, confusion or affection in the speaker’s tone. The band also contains a temperature sensor, a heart rate monitor and can measure body fat percentage.