Fitbit just paid $40 million to kill Pebble, hammering another nail in the smartwatch's coffin You will hear many things about today's Pebble acquisition by Fitbit - that it was about software, firmware, engineers, intellectual property, or simply that Pebble was unable to continue on as it existed. The one examination you should take to heart, though, is that Fitbit just straight up wrote a check to kill a competitor. There's really not any other way to slice this deal from Fitbit's end: Pebble was competition, even if not necessarily in a big commercial sense these days, and this was an easy way to smother a company that had hogged much of the wearable limelight. Fitbit even goes so far as to make expressly clear that they are not acquiring any assets or personnel related to Pebble's hardware division - only its software and firmware teams, and some intellectual property. All of Pebble's products, existing and upcoming, have been cancelled. Eventually, Pebble devices will see degraded service. Pebble will cease to exist as a brand. Pebble Time 2 will never launch. Also all warranties will no longer be honoured.... so that is pretty well much that. Current watches will continue to work but things will break in time. It certainly seems that demand right now is not for higher end smartwatches (glad I never decided yet to move beyond Pebble) and the demand is more around plainer fitness tracking devices with some notification capability (remember Pebble was moving into the tracker / health featureset). See http://ift.tt/2hh3D5M
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