
The Inside Story Behind Pebble’s Demise - dvichg
https://backchannel.com/the-real-story-behind-pebbles-demise-303802a7afaa#.9uw1p6lig
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mikestew
_The one killer app for wrist devices, at least so far, seems to be fitness.
Active people find it useful to wear something that quantifies your biometrics
and tracks your runs._

Ugh, I wished there were some way to have relayed this to the Pebble CEO a few
years back. I've been through three Pebbles, all of which were backed on
Kickstarter. But having to take the Pebble off my wrist to swap with a Garmin
before a run made this crystal clear to me: as soon as Garmin (et. al.) puts
notifications on their devices, Pebble is done. I knew the barrier was low
because I had done similar hands-on work for another large fitness-oriented
company. And when I updated my Garmin to one that had notifications and apps,
I never put my Pebble on again.

No one wears watches anymore. What would it take to get people to put
something on their wrist? Two or three years ago one need look no further than
the wrists of one's cow-orkers: fitness trackers. Be it the xTreme d00d who
wears his giant Suunto Ambit as a signal, or the office admin who just wants
to "lose a few pounds" with a $99 FitBit. I was usually met with indifference
as I went on about how nice it was to leave my phone in my pocket all day
thanks to Pebble. Until a watch renders Facebook feeds and toots, people are
going to take their phones out anyway, at least that's my guess. Take a look
at how many phone zombies have an Apple watch on their wrist (my current data
are taken from corporate halls of a large multinational that serves
caffeinated beverages, so the dataset might be skewed).

Most telling, though, was that the final Kickstarter was because they couldn't
get the money another way. Two versions shipped, and they still don't have
cash to back the manufacturing of a third? At that point, I'm going to guess
that Pebble knew they were done but a "hail Mary" was worth a shot. And like
most such plays, it didn't work. They gave it a good go, missed the market a
fair bit, but at a minimum I'd say that the team can be credited with getting
the ball rolling even if they didn't ultimately benefit from it.

