It was with real sadness yesterday when I read that Fitbit had purchased smartwatch company Pebble in order to acquire their software engineers and intellectual property – but not their core smartwatch business.
Fitbit is the giant fitness band manufacturer, and company officials told Bloomberg that they hope the Pebble software talent will help them better compete with tech giant Apple.
I have long had my eye on Pebble since they initially made the news with an enormously successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of their initial smartwatch, the Pebble. I became a customer with the launch of their second generation product, the Pebble Time.
The key benefit of the Pebble is that it has an e-ink screen rather than the more typical LED screen like the Apple Watch or Android Wear products. E-ink is not as bright an flashy as the LED screens are, but they draw very little power, allowing products like Amazon’s Kindle Reader and the Pebble to operate for long periods of time without recharging. For example, a typical tablet needs charging after several hours of use, but a Kindle without a backlight turned on can run for weeks without charging. An Apple Watch can have a hard time making it through one day of operation without a charge, while my Pebble Time is typically good for three-to-four days on a charge.
I liked the Pebble because it was relatively simple, relatively inexpensive, long running without a charge, and compatible with both iOS and Android phones. I liked that it was a smartwatch that served as a simple fitness band and as a second screen for my phone. And I loved that a young startup was trying to do something new and exciting.
I don’t blame Fitbit for killing off Pebble. The company did that to itself. They had trouble keeping up with the competition and were facing declining sales. They also had a product that was not really polished enough for prime time. I love my Pebble, but it has idiosyncrasies to making it work that I would not accept from Apple.
What’s happening here is pretty typical for the media and tech industries where small startups bring out innovative new technologies, over extend themselves, and then get bought out by more established companies.
I’m sorry to see Pebble go, though. And I hope someone else comes out with an e-ink smartwatch. That was a really cool idea.
Update – Nice appreciation of Pebble from Alejandro Alba at Vocative.