I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter.
I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble?
Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successful? They overreached and now the customers suffer. There should be a place for "small" manufacturer selling a niche product ("small" with a certain understatement like German "Mittelstand" enterprizes - I mean Pebble sold millions of units). If they had to increase the price by 10% to be sustainable, they still would have smashed the Kickstarter.
Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-). The same one that decided that cell phone batteries have to be non-removable, touchscreens glossy, and wearables either mini-smartphones or bluetooth-step-counters.
_All_ Kickstarters are gambles. Their messaging[1] is pretty clear in the fact that you aren't buying a product, you're contributing money with the hope that the maker will deliver on their promises.
I don't want to hit a person while they're down (in the dumps about their "purchase"), but going to Kickstarter for version 3 was my sign to give it a rest on buying Pebbles. Maybe it was just marketing, but it caused me to wonder "have you not made enough profit to support rolling out your third version without outside backing?" If it finally hit retail, great, I might get one then. But in the meantime I bought a Garmin Fenix instead of financing someone else's manufacturing interest-free.
Pebble wasn't aiming for market dominance, they were aiming for market traction. How many Pebbles do you see in the wild? Now, how many Apple Watches do you see? How many Garmins? FitBits? "Notifications" is the baseline these days. It's just a given if I buy a fancy electronic watch. So where does that put Pebble? Having the same notification functionality as other devices, only not as slick and more cheap looking. Oh, Pebble has fitness stuff now? Have fun going up against Garmin and FitBit. As more and more devices gain the functionality that defined Pebble, Pebble went from the leader in this segment to playing catch-up.
Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-).
Of course you know better. :-) Pebble sold you a device, everyone else sells you an ecosystem. All the fitness add-ons in the world won't make a difference if there isn't some form of analysis and data storage behind it. I can go back to stuff my Garmins have recorded over a decade ago. FitBit's got something similar, Nike (back when they made hardware), and others I've missed. Apple and Android watches tie into their respective systems for more functionality than just notifications on your wrist. Nope, no cabal, the market just moved on and Pebble got left behind. We do have nice things, they just don't have "Pebble" silkscreened on them now.
They genuinely believed they were going to change the world, drank too much of their own kool-aid and eventually ran out of money.
Pretty sure they feel terrible right now and I don't think they slept well for the past 6 months.
Could someone reasonable see this coming before KS? Most likely yes. Would they get this far without taking big risks? Most likely no.
You feel angry you didn't get your pebbles, I feel angry I didn't get my two pebbles and a core.
Imagine how they feel - reportedly turned down $750 mil and less than a year later had to apply for a job at another struggling wearables manufacturer.
VC/exponential growth increase risk of exploding the whole company.
In alternative reality:
1. They could hire way less aggressive and stay lean. Product development will be much slower, but they can operate cash flow positive.
2. With Kickstarter/pre-orders they could avoid taking any serious VC funding.
3. They probably need to move less expensive region than SF Bay Area. SF is great for go big or go home, but not an ideal place for long-term sustainable business.
4. Probably the price of watches would be higher and they will be niche, but still there are tons of watch manufactures that survived decades.
Totally this. I'd gladly pay double for Time 2 if it meant the platform will grow sustainably.
> Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-). The same one that decided that cell phone batteries have to be non-removable, touchscreens glossy, and wearables either mini-smartphones or bluetooth-step-counters.
I feel that all the time. Of course it's not a secret cabal, just the free market promoting get-rich-quick schemes and making it harder for sustainable businesses and actually useful products to survive.
This last kickstarter raised $12million while only requiring $1million to fund. I'm really unsure how they managed to get 12x the "required" funding but still fail to deliver.
> I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill?
The probably made some, but it takes money to turn any component inventory they may have into shippable products. They probably burned all of the money on mechanical tooling and part procurement already, and maybe hit a major issue in doing so (critical component is suddenly a very different price, etc). All of that inventory either is returned (if possible) or ends up liquidated on the secondary electronics component market for pennies on the dollar, to pay back the creditors. Custom parts, tools, etc have less of a resale market, but I'm sure a company in China will be happy to pick them up cheap to make smartwatches for the local market.
Having done a hardware Kickstarter, I can tell you it's not as easy as just "increase the price". Hardware is hard. We did two crowdfunding campaigns: almost broke even on the first one, and are still in massive debt from the second one. Although I'm glad we came through for our backers, I wish we had just refunded everyone. The aftermath has been incredibly stressful both mentally and fiscally.
Hardware isn't really profitable or even sustainable until you are shipping millions of units. That's why you don't see many hardware startups succeeding without either massive amounts of VC funding, or a really cheap-to-make product that you can sell for much more than it's worth (e.g. Fitbit). That's why any investor will tell you that the subscription model is basically the only way to go if you're making hardware.
According to one of the developers, they produced a very tiny number of Time 2's for testing. She has said those ones all worked perfectly but even she didn't even get one.
It's clear to me that Fitbit bought Pebble to kill it. It was the only smart watch that had good functionality, good battery life, good pricing, and easy user programmability. So of course it had to die. The founders no doubt got a nice payout and the customers, as usual, got forcibly sodomized.
You'll get a refund. What's the problem? I've lost money backing stuff where the money just disappeared. Not even that has angered me. Kickstarter is not a store.
Did they aim for total market dominance? I haven't followed it to closely, but to me it didn't seem like they did any totally crazy expansions. Seems like they should have developed further models in smaller steps, but would people have bought enough of those then?
If they have 20 millions in debt, just increasing the price on their kickstarters slightly wouldn't have done it, so they obviously overdid something.
I'm sad/angry/depressed as any Pebbler right now, so I won't repeat those comments. Instead, since this is HN after all, let me ask - what shall we do?
In a year or two, when my current Pebble Time fails, I'd love an equivalent smartwatch to be available. Since the market doesn't seem to want it, how can we make it happen anyway?
Features I'm looking for are, in order of priority:
- always-on screen, preferably color (like Pebble Time), but monochromatic will do
- open SDK for writing software for the watch
- battery life at least the one like Pebble's - 5-7 days
- *zero* dependency on cloud for it to work
- basic, standard suite of sensors onboard - compass/magnetometer/accelerometer, maybe a mike
- elegant form factor
Now I can go the DIY route (I have a friend with experience in making smartwatches from ground-up, though I'd look at some SOCs instead of going the uC + separate sensors route - to save on watch size). Many of us here could do it. But honestly, I have shit ton of other stuff to do, and I'd rather pay for such a watch and enjoy the ecosystem, just like I did with Pebbles. And if everyone goes the DIY route, and there won't be some standardization along the way, there will be no community. Any idea how to coordinate and make this happen? Maybe a community, open-hardware design + crowdfunding for production?
I am so sad about this. I had told myself that at least I'd get a Time 2 and a Core, and stave myself off before the sadness hits again that Pebble is gone.
Pebble's products were an excellent example of lateral technology. No need for high DPI on your watch, because they made something that looks good with few pixels. Making battery life a priority in a world of WiFi-enabled pressure cookers.
Even when the battery ran out you still got 24 hours of a watch that would at least tell the time!
I have no idea if it is possible to produce something like Pebbles at low quantities, but I would love to see an open design with similar specs. I think these watches are better than anything else out there, and it's sad the design is going to disappear.
Considering that Pebble is stopping product development, cancelling orders, ending warranties, ending support, and essentially completely shutting down I find the positive tone of this post and the Kickstarter update post to be nearly unbelievable.
I know we see plenty of "our incredible journey" posts filled with optimism, but euphemistic language and dozens of photos of watches and happy people and more watches is jarring.
It's not a shame to try hard at something and fail. But it is a shame to fail and pretend you succeeded. We can see through you.
You know, Pebble has garnered one of the best group of loyal customers I know of: well-off techies.
Had they came to the community and said, "hey we are losing sales and we need everyone to pitch in $10 / year for software support (maybe a web interface for fitness or something) I guarantee a few hundred thousand people would have done it.
Had they shared a coupon with the community (i.e. email add campaign, or add on watch - "buy one, get one half off" for christmas they would have probably had a large bump in orders. Although I recognize this would be a mild annoyance, I can also guarantee they would have sold plenty of units.
This simply seems like poor management and it's frustrating because it's the best smart watch I can find at the moment. It does exactly what I want, is cheaper than the competition, and is dead simple to use.
WTF pebble, you had the product people loved - you just didn't market it well.
>"Had they came to the community and said, "hey we are losing sales and we need everyone to pitch in $10 / year for software support (maybe a web interface for fitness or something) I guarantee a few hundred thousand people would have done it."
What is this based on? I'd be shocked if that worked. I think it'd be a sign of blood in the water, and signal the end (if vendors see this, they're going to want to be paid up front, employees are going to start looking for the exits).
> Had they shared a coupon with the community (i.e. email add campaign, or add on watch - "buy one, get one half off" for christmas they would have probably had a large bump in orders. Although I recognize this would be a mild annoyance, I can also guarantee they would have sold plenty of units.
Pure volume wasn't what sank the ship, I'm sure. It probably would have put them out of business faster.
> "This simply seems like poor management"
That's an easy thing to say, but it's probably more complex than that. They were in a tough spot, with competition from much, much deeper pockets.
It seems very much like poor management. The "go big, or go home" culture of the valley. Where businesses think if they can't be a billion dollar unicorn, then they might as well die. It makes companies push too hard for explosive growth instead of building a sustainable business.
This is exactly right. 100s of thousands of well off techies strap your product to our body and the best deal you could arrange is to put a bullet in the companies head?
It seems very strange they are basically just shutting down. That has to be an ego driven decision on the FitBit side - they wanted to kill Pebble. Are they even going to use the brand name? The combination of: working production facility, users in the wild, and (the biggest asset) a developer community had to have some value. Now that the deal is done there is no chance to pry that out of publicly traded FitBit, but it seems like this could have had a better outcome.
I don't think they even have a few hundred thousand customers. Their first one kicked in the neighborhood of 50k supporters. Did they even ship the second?
A hardware company on the hook for fulfilling 50k orders of the sequel has some pretty serious expenses. A sale might have been the best landing and what got everyone a refund for the 2nd.
Yeah, pardon my french but I'm fucking angry this morning.
There's some initial reports that they need service back-end to be live in order to do the initial pairing. My Time Round is a dead watch walking if that's the case.
There's not a comparable smartwatch right now that is like the Time Round, I'd happily have paid for ongoing support.
Assuming all of the ~200,000 kickstarter backers would have been okay with the $10/year software, and no duplication of backers between their three campaigns, and that yearly payment kicking in as soon as each of the three campaigns ended (so before the customers even got their devices), that would have brought in a bit shy of $5m, compared to the ~$43m they brought in from their three campaigns. It's a good thought, but I doubt their revenue stream was only 10% away from being sustainable.
I can't believe this, just got a Pebble 2 a week ago and now they are literally saying it may not work in the future.
If we rely on their cloud services for activity tracking and app downloads then it will be useless if FitBit doesn't maintain the platform.
I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware. If the company fails forget about the smart stuff you bought, it just won't work anymore.
We should look for ways to minimize the impact on backers. Sadly we'll see more of this in a future in which the products depend a lot on the company cloud services to operate.
As someone who quite likes their time steel and who was patiently waiting for their time 2 this is incredibly frustrating. No other watches do what I want so I guess my foray into smart watches is over. It's a shame too because I appreciate the convenience it offers but I probably won't miss it much after a couple of weeks
Tldr: FitBit acquires() bankrupt pebble, lays of 60% of staff, cancels all pebble product lines. FitBit also cancels the warranties on already sold pebbles. FitBit may also have stiffed some holders of $27m of pebble's debt.
() due to legal shenanigans we must not call this an acquisition or an acqui-hire. Also, FitBit didn't do those things, a shell company created by this deal did, which is totally different somehow.
When things like this happen, I always hope that consumers that got screwed over by the deal (and people that hear about it) avoid the acquiring company after the fact. If they treat pebble customers like this, how will they treat their own customers later?
> Pebble devices will continue to work as normal. No immediate changes to the Pebble user experience will happen at this time.
> Pebble functionality or service quality may be reduced in the future.
That's very unfortunate. How much of Pebble relies on some online service? Is it still possible to install apps/updates without their infrastructure?
For companies that don't open source their stuff by default, it would be so nice if there was some kind of escrow service where upon dissolution of the company (sale, bankruptcy, etc) the required software to keep their hardware going would be released. I suspect the problem is while it's a win for consumers, not enough would care: the mass market is not going to only buy products that have this escrow service, and at the same time, it's handcuffs for the business, likely complicating a sale or liquidation of the company, and possibly turning investors off.
I hope the Pebble doesn't become a complete wristbrick, but it's always a shame to see perfectly good hardware crippled because there's no longer a piece of software running entirely outside the consumer's control.
this blog post is absurd. They are shutting down, not manufacturing/selling stuffy anymore. It's over, the bubble popped, icarus flew too high and crashed.
And yet everybody having fun with their pebbles on the pictures. Also featured: the energetic team, the diverse ecosystem with lots of developers. This is absurd. The only thing missing is the "our incredible journey"-phrase.
The whole blog-post if marketing BS, even the headline is a lie. "Pebble's next step", there is no next step, it's over for pebble! Some might work for fitbit in the future, but pebble is dead. They don't explain why and how, they are just glorifying their past and don't admit any mistakes.
Wow this is even worse than expected from the previous news articles... If they're winding down all support and warranties, PLEASE release as much of the watch operating system code as possible! I know some of the IP was sold, but if Fitbit won't be continuing support please help those of us who love our current watches keep them going!
I don't usually get upset about this stuff, business is business, but with my outstanding time 2 and core orders, I am definitely feeling bamboozled.
I always thought of pebbles fighting fitbits, the watch for 'us' vs the trackers for everyone. The open platform vs the locked in, the device that got just what you wanted done vs the not-really-a-watch.
It seemed like with pebble health and their relationship with Stanford things were on the up and up. Now ending warranties and such a trying to be nice but not really announcement. I expect nothing from fitbit. This sucks.
I'd like to know how this happened really. Pebbles were pretty decent and their successful campaigns definitely contributed to the rise of smart watches. But after having two hugely successful crowdfunding campaigns, how did they fail?
There are dozens of people on the pictures on the linked pages. You have to sell a lot of $99 watches to pay them all. They say 2 million watches sold; gross margin of - what - $10? $20? Say $40mm margin over the 8 years they mention; staff costs of $5mm/year (50 people, 100k/year including everything - unrealistically low estimate). That doesn't even leave room for other development costs, visits to production factories, returns, everything else. Having done 'a successful crowdfunding campaign' is not an enviable position to be in, most of the time - although of course the vast majority of backers have no experience running a business whatsoever and think 'these guys are sitting on a mountain of money, what can go wrong'.
When such a large percentage of your sales as a company come from kickstarter, where you seemingly have to give a heavy discount to the real price. My guess is that it becomes hard to succeed in retail/other channels at a real price with margin that could sustain a company.
Pebble is no longer promoting, manufacturing, or selling any devices.
From header of getpebble.com:
Buy Now $99
Also, the store promoting Pebble has no prominent announcement that they aren't promoting Pebble anymore (the one watch I checked did say out of stock, so they aren't selling it at the moment).
> Pebble’s Migicovsky is planning to rejoin startup incubator Y Combinator as a partner advising early-stage companies on hardware development, people with knowledge of the matter said. Y Combinator’s hardware head recently left, Bloomberg News reported last month.
Would have been better if they had open sourced the OS and the server code. And the designs for that matter. Obviously the IP is worth quite a bit, but since it doesn't look like FitBit will be producing similar hardware, it sucks to essentially lose these designs and it sucks that at any point FitBit can just shutter the services that make the current watches work.
Also, the Core was going to be awesome. Too bad it didn't happen.
[+] [-] captainmuon|9 years ago|reply
I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble?
Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successful? They overreached and now the customers suffer. There should be a place for "small" manufacturer selling a niche product ("small" with a certain understatement like German "Mittelstand" enterprizes - I mean Pebble sold millions of units). If they had to increase the price by 10% to be sustainable, they still would have smashed the Kickstarter.
Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-). The same one that decided that cell phone batteries have to be non-removable, touchscreens glossy, and wearables either mini-smartphones or bluetooth-step-counters.
[+] [-] victorvation|9 years ago|reply
_All_ Kickstarters are gambles. Their messaging[1] is pretty clear in the fact that you aren't buying a product, you're contributing money with the hope that the maker will deliver on their promises.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store
[+] [-] mikestew|9 years ago|reply
Pebble wasn't aiming for market dominance, they were aiming for market traction. How many Pebbles do you see in the wild? Now, how many Apple Watches do you see? How many Garmins? FitBits? "Notifications" is the baseline these days. It's just a given if I buy a fancy electronic watch. So where does that put Pebble? Having the same notification functionality as other devices, only not as slick and more cheap looking. Oh, Pebble has fitness stuff now? Have fun going up against Garmin and FitBit. As more and more devices gain the functionality that defined Pebble, Pebble went from the leader in this segment to playing catch-up.
Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-).
Of course you know better. :-) Pebble sold you a device, everyone else sells you an ecosystem. All the fitness add-ons in the world won't make a difference if there isn't some form of analysis and data storage behind it. I can go back to stuff my Garmins have recorded over a decade ago. FitBit's got something similar, Nike (back when they made hardware), and others I've missed. Apple and Android watches tie into their respective systems for more functionality than just notifications on your wrist. Nope, no cabal, the market just moved on and Pebble got left behind. We do have nice things, they just don't have "Pebble" silkscreened on them now.
[+] [-] paulftw|9 years ago|reply
Pretty sure they feel terrible right now and I don't think they slept well for the past 6 months. Could someone reasonable see this coming before KS? Most likely yes. Would they get this far without taking big risks? Most likely no.
You feel angry you didn't get your pebbles, I feel angry I didn't get my two pebbles and a core.
Imagine how they feel - reportedly turned down $750 mil and less than a year later had to apply for a job at another struggling wearables manufacturer.
[+] [-] jakozaur|9 years ago|reply
In alternative reality:
1. They could hire way less aggressive and stay lean. Product development will be much slower, but they can operate cash flow positive.
2. With Kickstarter/pre-orders they could avoid taking any serious VC funding.
3. They probably need to move less expensive region than SF Bay Area. SF is great for go big or go home, but not an ideal place for long-term sustainable business.
4. Probably the price of watches would be higher and they will be niche, but still there are tons of watch manufactures that survived decades.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|9 years ago|reply
> Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-). The same one that decided that cell phone batteries have to be non-removable, touchscreens glossy, and wearables either mini-smartphones or bluetooth-step-counters.
I feel that all the time. Of course it's not a secret cabal, just the free market promoting get-rich-quick schemes and making it harder for sustainable businesses and actually useful products to survive.
[+] [-] distantsounds|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theatrus2|9 years ago|reply
The probably made some, but it takes money to turn any component inventory they may have into shippable products. They probably burned all of the money on mechanical tooling and part procurement already, and maybe hit a major issue in doing so (critical component is suddenly a very different price, etc). All of that inventory either is returned (if possible) or ends up liquidated on the secondary electronics component market for pennies on the dollar, to pay back the creditors. Custom parts, tools, etc have less of a resale market, but I'm sure a company in China will be happy to pick them up cheap to make smartwatches for the local market.
[+] [-] odbol_|9 years ago|reply
Hardware isn't really profitable or even sustainable until you are shipping millions of units. That's why you don't see many hardware startups succeeding without either massive amounts of VC funding, or a really cheap-to-make product that you can sell for much more than it's worth (e.g. Fitbit). That's why any investor will tell you that the subscription model is basically the only way to go if you're making hardware.
[+] [-] wvenable|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreamcompiler|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ronreiter|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arjie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kiro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] detaro|9 years ago|reply
If they have 20 millions in debt, just increasing the price on their kickstarters slightly wouldn't have done it, so they obviously overdid something.
[+] [-] manigandham|9 years ago|reply
Because they want money, and it's very hard to be sustainably profitable when it comes to hardware without major scale.
If you can do different/better, then go do it. Be the change you want to see.
[+] [-] tomaskafka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucodibidil|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otabdeveloper1|9 years ago|reply
There is, it's called "Chinese OEM manufacturers".
(Yes, I know that an 'OEM manufacturer' is like an 'ATM machine'.)
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|9 years ago|reply
In a year or two, when my current Pebble Time fails, I'd love an equivalent smartwatch to be available. Since the market doesn't seem to want it, how can we make it happen anyway?
Features I'm looking for are, in order of priority:
Now I can go the DIY route (I have a friend with experience in making smartwatches from ground-up, though I'd look at some SOCs instead of going the uC + separate sensors route - to save on watch size). Many of us here could do it. But honestly, I have shit ton of other stuff to do, and I'd rather pay for such a watch and enjoy the ecosystem, just like I did with Pebbles. And if everyone goes the DIY route, and there won't be some standardization along the way, there will be no community. Any idea how to coordinate and make this happen? Maybe a community, open-hardware design + crowdfunding for production?[+] [-] rtpg|9 years ago|reply
Pebble's products were an excellent example of lateral technology. No need for high DPI on your watch, because they made something that looks good with few pixels. Making battery life a priority in a world of WiFi-enabled pressure cookers.
Even when the battery ran out you still got 24 hours of a watch that would at least tell the time!
I have no idea if it is possible to produce something like Pebbles at low quantities, but I would love to see an open design with similar specs. I think these watches are better than anything else out there, and it's sad the design is going to disappear.
[+] [-] scblock|9 years ago|reply
I know we see plenty of "our incredible journey" posts filled with optimism, but euphemistic language and dozens of photos of watches and happy people and more watches is jarring.
It's not a shame to try hard at something and fail. But it is a shame to fail and pretend you succeeded. We can see through you.
[+] [-] lettergram|9 years ago|reply
Had they came to the community and said, "hey we are losing sales and we need everyone to pitch in $10 / year for software support (maybe a web interface for fitness or something) I guarantee a few hundred thousand people would have done it.
Had they shared a coupon with the community (i.e. email add campaign, or add on watch - "buy one, get one half off" for christmas they would have probably had a large bump in orders. Although I recognize this would be a mild annoyance, I can also guarantee they would have sold plenty of units.
This simply seems like poor management and it's frustrating because it's the best smart watch I can find at the moment. It does exactly what I want, is cheaper than the competition, and is dead simple to use.
WTF pebble, you had the product people loved - you just didn't market it well.
[+] [-] JonFish85|9 years ago|reply
What is this based on? I'd be shocked if that worked. I think it'd be a sign of blood in the water, and signal the end (if vendors see this, they're going to want to be paid up front, employees are going to start looking for the exits).
> Had they shared a coupon with the community (i.e. email add campaign, or add on watch - "buy one, get one half off" for christmas they would have probably had a large bump in orders. Although I recognize this would be a mild annoyance, I can also guarantee they would have sold plenty of units.
Pure volume wasn't what sank the ship, I'm sure. It probably would have put them out of business faster.
> "This simply seems like poor management"
That's an easy thing to say, but it's probably more complex than that. They were in a tough spot, with competition from much, much deeper pockets.
[+] [-] velocitypsycho|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asmithmd1|9 years ago|reply
It seems very strange they are basically just shutting down. That has to be an ego driven decision on the FitBit side - they wanted to kill Pebble. Are they even going to use the brand name? The combination of: working production facility, users in the wild, and (the biggest asset) a developer community had to have some value. Now that the deal is done there is no chance to pry that out of publicly traded FitBit, but it seems like this could have had a better outcome.
[+] [-] mattmaroon|9 years ago|reply
A hardware company on the hook for fulfilling 50k orders of the sequel has some pretty serious expenses. A sale might have been the best landing and what got everyone a refund for the 2nd.
[+] [-] vvanders|9 years ago|reply
There's some initial reports that they need service back-end to be live in order to do the initial pairing. My Time Round is a dead watch walking if that's the case.
There's not a comparable smartwatch right now that is like the Time Round, I'd happily have paid for ongoing support.
[+] [-] delecti|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|9 years ago|reply
https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge
I've not looked into it yet, but it is described as:
"A free and cloudless replacement for your gadget vendors' closed source Android applications. Pebble and Mi Band supported."
The feature list seems substantial. So hopefully we'll be able to continue to use our pebbles for some time.
[+] [-] alonsonic|9 years ago|reply
If we rely on their cloud services for activity tracking and app downloads then it will be useless if FitBit doesn't maintain the platform.
I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware. If the company fails forget about the smart stuff you bought, it just won't work anymore.
We should look for ways to minimize the impact on backers. Sadly we'll see more of this in a future in which the products depend a lot on the company cloud services to operate.
[+] [-] tedajax|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedora|9 years ago|reply
() due to legal shenanigans we must not call this an acquisition or an acqui-hire. Also, FitBit didn't do those things, a shell company created by this deal did, which is totally different somehow.
When things like this happen, I always hope that consumers that got screwed over by the deal (and people that hear about it) avoid the acquiring company after the fact. If they treat pebble customers like this, how will they treat their own customers later?
[+] [-] gregmac|9 years ago|reply
That's very unfortunate. How much of Pebble relies on some online service? Is it still possible to install apps/updates without their infrastructure?
For companies that don't open source their stuff by default, it would be so nice if there was some kind of escrow service where upon dissolution of the company (sale, bankruptcy, etc) the required software to keep their hardware going would be released. I suspect the problem is while it's a win for consumers, not enough would care: the mass market is not going to only buy products that have this escrow service, and at the same time, it's handcuffs for the business, likely complicating a sale or liquidation of the company, and possibly turning investors off.
I hope the Pebble doesn't become a complete wristbrick, but it's always a shame to see perfectly good hardware crippled because there's no longer a piece of software running entirely outside the consumer's control.
[+] [-] LeanderK|9 years ago|reply
And yet everybody having fun with their pebbles on the pictures. Also featured: the energetic team, the diverse ecosystem with lots of developers. This is absurd. The only thing missing is the "our incredible journey"-phrase.
The whole blog-post if marketing BS, even the headline is a lie. "Pebble's next step", there is no next step, it's over for pebble! Some might work for fitbit in the future, but pebble is dead. They don't explain why and how, they are just glorifying their past and don't admit any mistakes.
[+] [-] pbnjay|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fudgy73|9 years ago|reply
I always thought of pebbles fighting fitbits, the watch for 'us' vs the trackers for everyone. The open platform vs the locked in, the device that got just what you wanted done vs the not-really-a-watch.
It seemed like with pebble health and their relationship with Stanford things were on the up and up. Now ending warranties and such a trying to be nice but not really announcement. I expect nothing from fitbit. This sucks.
[+] [-] dijit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roel_v|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TarpitCarnivore|9 years ago|reply
One could argue having to go continuously go back to that well meant they never gained the market traction they were hoping for.
[+] [-] stingrae|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 years ago|reply
From text of announcement:
Pebble is no longer promoting, manufacturing, or selling any devices.
From header of getpebble.com:
Buy Now $99
Also, the store promoting Pebble has no prominent announcement that they aren't promoting Pebble anymore (the one watch I checked did say out of stock, so they aren't selling it at the moment).
[+] [-] denzil_correa|9 years ago|reply
Pebble CEO seems to be joining YC.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-07/pebble-sa...
[+] [-] sandis|9 years ago|reply
That's not very nice.
[+] [-] wenbin|9 years ago|reply
Man, you really can't tell whether a startup is doing well or not from outside. Everything's AWESOME all the time:
* Oct 31, 2016: Get Spooky with Halloween Pebble Faces!
* Oct 18, 2016: What’s New in Pebble’s 4.2 Firmware and Apps
* Oct 05, 2016: Pebble 2: Fit & Smart
* Sep 30, 2016: Pebble 2 Kickstarter Rewards Start Shipping
* Sep 14, 2016: Pebble Core = More Awesome with Amazon Alexa Expansion in the UK and Germany
... and then suddenly making big headline: "Dec 7, 2016: Pebble's next step".
[+] [-] IgorPartola|9 years ago|reply
Also, the Core was going to be awesome. Too bad it didn't happen.
[+] [-] diego_moita|9 years ago|reply
There is an old Italian anarchist poem[0] that sings: "date fiori ai ribelli caduti", "give flowers to the fallen rebels".
Flowers for you, rebels.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X0Rsf_7f0U
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|9 years ago|reply